Was I full of endeavour to busting?
No, I’d read all the patterns before.
You could probably say I was dusting,
proposing to polish once more
all the metres of English poetics
under names that are catalogued Greek;
I wasn’t quite madly ecstatic
at being stir-Fryed for a week.
But I went to my trusty computer
and studied the sellers on line,
of new books and discounts and old books
of quality, Poor, Good or Fine.
I ordered a volume to study
that morning, the first day of March;
expecting that, sooner or later,
it would thud on the mat in the porch.
I wasn’t in any great hurry.
For three weeks I hushed down my mind,
accepting, the rural post service
is always a few days behind;
then I e-mailed the seller and queried,
“Why hasn’t my copy arrived?”
An autoresponse sent the message,
“Reply with the subject line ‘dived’.”
I e-mailed again, and politely
the seller requested I wait,
in case the fine book I had ordered
should simply be travelling late.
On the first day of April, I’d had it!
I emailed the seller again:
an autoresponse sent the message,
“Reply with the subject line ‘rain’.”
I e-mailed again, and unworried
the seller refunded my cost:
My order, The Ode Less Travelled,
in transit, he said, had been lost.