Sid DeLong, Thirteen Ways, With Apologies to Wallace Stevens

Readers seeking to make sense of this effort are invited first to read
Wallace Stevens’s, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A CONTRACT
Sidney Wallace DeLong

I.
Three blackbirds on a swaying cedar bough
Wind sighing on a dotted line.

II.
The economist bought twenty-four blackbirds
Making the pie larger.

III.
Under duress
I find I must accept
The blackbird’s morning offer.

IV.
Angry flutters
In mating season
Black forms battle silently.

V.
The blackbird’s call is neither interpreted
Nor construed.
The blackbird is neither interpreted
Nor construed.

VI.
How many seeds will the blackbird find?
Quantum meruit
No more, no less.

VII.
The question is
What is a blackbird?
Everything except a goose, a duck,
Or a turkey.

VIII.
At four minutes after dawn, the blackbirds
Reach consensus ad idem
Then, silence as ascent.

IX.
Six blackbirds are a legal fiction
One blackbird six times is a legal fiction
One blackbird is a legal fiction

X.
A blackbird sits outside your window
Laissez ou´ prendre
He is there.

XI.
The blackbird performed
As required
But in bad faith.

XII.
Bug in beak
The blackbird returns to the nest
Pacta sunt servanda.

XIII.
Startled
An integration of blackbirds
Arise as one
Mutuality of Ascent