A Toast to the Baltimore Oriole

Here’s to your good looks and the neat way you shit
with a brisk bob like a curtsey, easy as song.
Here’s to your song, which,
though “neither rhythmical nor musical” (The Birds of Canada),
relieves me of all speech and never deals with what is past,
or passing, or to come.
And, as a monument to the sturdy fragile woven
scrotum of your nest,
I hereby dedicate baseball.