The avalanche of his words bury mine

Now in an abyss, to be found some

Day or night. Profound, wonder-filled

All will think and say.

More than gratuitous handshakes after my captivating,

Uninterrupted

Pulping homilies in the absence of a pastor.

When

Conversations are claimed by them, turned away

Before I finish my sentences, miming well

The chickens I feared as a child age three. I’d

Held up my handful of corn above my head as

Gramma scattered it from her cupped apron, and so

Learned chickens could fly up, sink their feet into

My startled face to win it.

From our side of the breakfast table, when asked about

Gloria, quasi-widow,

Only we can see her realistic cow head oil looking at us:

“She stays busy. She did a portrait of Vicki,” he says with the slightest nod toward it.

They express no interest in seeing it; he

Points out her artwork within their prolix purview.

“Moo!”

Nor is it Homer nods, but that we dream.   ~~ Pope

By Vicki Hill

September 2, 2014

He had the sleepiest

eyes since

Rip Van Winkle

closed his for twenty-

years, but, in his

case, when he

opened them

with a strum

of a C-chord,

every girl in the room,

the concert hall,

watching on black

and white T.V. or

maybe the new color

ones

would swoon

and Ricky would

sell another album

ever so soon.

The seventy-year-old,

who has strummed

a guitar since he

was seventeen,

saw Rick (without

the “y”)

blink those baby blues

in ever slow motion

on a T.V. promotion,

fingered a C-chord on

his air guitar, blinked

and when he awoke

caught the last half of

a BBC mystery on PBS,

so late at night the sun

would rise soon

and he realized

he had donated two

hundred bucks to

all that 50’s and 60’s

stuff helping

to assure that BBC

would continue on

U.S. PBS T.V.