The King Asked the Queen and the Queen Asked the Dairymaid

            sunlight buttered on the grass
            James Schuyler, Morning of the Poem

Why does the bread of poetry
need so much butter on it?
Ask the Alderney!

Heavy calories?
Better to put jelly on it,
the crusty bread of poetry?

Call me fussy,
but (pox upon it!)
please check with the Alderney

one last time, OK?
I need butter for my sonnet.
You ask why poetry

needs butter, eh?
Well (deary me!),
when an Alderney

mooes plaintively, all she can see
in the meadow is sunlight
buttered on the grass of poetry.
So says the Alderney!