Malapropos

The man was strange: he spoke
in labyrinthine acrostics, indeed
had just completed
an oral composition which,
if read vertically, would make up
the first two thousand words
of an obscure Ciceronian epistle
in the original Latin.
I took this on faith, for old time's sake
but made a mental note to check the math
at a later date. I knew this man's character.
He had pilfered an accordion
I was quite fond of toying around with
that had belonged to my grandfather,
and which my mother had bequeathed to me
in the suicide note . . . but I digress . . .

Out West, Indian summer oppresses;
we try to retrieve shadows
from nasty dogs, but bared teeth
and growls turn us away, so we lie
in the sun, even the grass hot and baking
our backs. How did we come to this?
For hours we ponder, cogitate, ruminate,
any number of synonyms,
but today the valley frowns on questions
and most clouds are indefinite wisps.