Once, under a time,
A figure was spied in the back meadows
Just over there.
A chaotic irregular thing.
It had glinting eyes of sea glass buttons,
A wayward curve to the parsnip nose;
The pale, stretched torso stuffed, choked,
With a strange waxy straw.
Every tooth a tarnished, sharpened, penny dreadful.

Two mouldering earrings were pinned into approximate place.
One foot lingered in a bucket,
The other sat wedged within a 1960’s go-go boot.
Peeling, patient, patent.
A donkey-jacketed ass.
The fancy flair of a foolish debonair.

Long, loose, Lycra clad legs drifted back and forth,
(The fourth and fifth to the third)
In a mockery of sentient movement.
Below the magnificent ruined brim of a rambunctious top hat,
A head sits draped in a flowing curled cascade;
The rusting scarlet of a faded foil party-wig
Flailing it’s singular, elderly, neon strands in the wind.
All dressed up with no air to blow.

An oddity . . . even in its field.