if you save up nickels in your jarred garage

to sell on a cruise–that, my friend’s, arbitrage

as long as the buyer’s sufficiently dense

as to give you per each in excess of five cents.

.

when acorns reach soil and there find safe harbor

a sapling may soon be enhancing an arbor

and if that safe arbor is somewhere in michigan

could it be an ann arbor arbor? we wish again.

.

a rhubarb’s a colorful stalk or a beef

in baseball when coaches and umps yell their grief

but both may be settled if they chance to try

addition of strawberries: sweet rhubarb pie.

.

the pluck of a syllable from its word-origin

may not be the best vessel to put your porridge in

but sure as my namesake’s a drummer named gary

it makes unchaotic the once…arb-itrary.

***

Life-historical note: I was named after a man my folks picked up hitchhiking in 1954. He had a pair of drumsticks with him and was demonstrating his drummer’s skill zanily in the back seat as he introduced himself as Gary Fromer the Drummer. Mom had a bun in the oven, me, and Mom and Dad found Mr. Fromer so personable and lively that they memorialized their encounter with him by naming me Gary. I later found out that he hung out with Lenny Bruce and also was briefly in a Stan Getz combo.