Journal from the Time of My Leaving Southern Pines, 15 March 2019 [A Nest Rhyme]

Boswell stews atop an overturned pi-
rogue that he dugout of a storage pit

steaming like the holy host of the ass-
embly line’s stash of copper sprags and brass

pinions, stainless spur-wheels, and tin sprockets
all put together wrong like a backwards rocket,

spouting of battles and penny-dreadful wounds
that, by the gash in his gown, advanced the detuned

clue that would carve out to the runed idea
that not one platoon but a whole battalion

of German Guards were, for his own hoopla,
conducting a little exercise through the air

when, in fact, Boswell was wholly unconnected,
and having a bad fright in the cathouse

of the Night’s terror, laying in dire-
ful apprehension that my testicle,

which formerly had been ill,
was again swelled [against all

luck] for as Douglas stood by me and said
“This […] damned and difficult case.”