Some Assemblage Required

Vaughn's aluminum-foil dolphin floating,
bloated, in a sea of bric-a-brac—wood screws,
bottle caps, bubble wrap, plastic bits
of straw, blue pebbles, tiny golden bells,
and strips of black felt—all of a piece
hovering on the yellow wall to my right
which isn't so much an important detail
as a true one clamoring to mean something—
the way detritus appears in a hundred poems
a year but paying bills is all but absent—
the shiny dolphin that could be a dull whale,
could be the bright moon hooked on a dark cloud,
could be more than fodder for another poem
to be saved to my “09 chunks” folder.