Just for fun

This ain't no work of genius, but it may well be the only English poem ever to be inspired by a triple German pun. Should maybe explain that "Strauss", apart from being the name of the Waltz King, also means (1) a bouquet of flowers and (2) an ostrich.

Strauss

The ostrich's petals are shaggy,
chrysanthemum-bronze and cream
above their oasis cushion.
The neck is a feathery stem

of maidenhair fern, and it flexes
and dips with a dancer's pace
like a girl being whirled round a ballroom,
some frothy young Viennese miss

who will prove less flighty than flightless,
confined to a vase, to the ground,
to a body, a life that keeps moving
around and around and around.