Pray Tell No

By Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles

Posted on Saturday, August 2, 2014
from rural Washington County, Arkansas

Haven't seen a fellow human since Wednesday morning when my true love drove away in the direction of the airport.  Seclusion is not necessarily loneliness.  The voice on the telephone, purporting to be hers, tells me she is safely arrived for the honeymoon at Niagara Falls.  I'm pretty sure it's true.  Can't imagine where else she'd be.

I'll go home and pack my clothes
You get your visas 'n' all that
An' away we'll go
Off we're gonna shuffle-uffle-uffle off to Buffalo
 
To Niagra in a sleeper
No honeymoon that's cheaper
And the train goes slow
Off we're gonna shuffle-uffle-uffle off to Buffalo

Butterfly on the lily, cardinal in the birdbath, loyal hound on the yellow pine of the bedroom floor.  You can't ask for more than the truth get it when you can.

Wish I could stay here, unbroken, for another day or two, but word arrives that Hitler has begun a war in Poland and the car payment's due soon.  Suppose I'll have to mount the Atomic Road Lizard for a jaunt to the post office and the birds are hungry.  Isis needs a new leather collar.  Nailed to the leather shall be a brass plate stating R E W A R D with my phone number should Isis become lost pray tell no!  That means after the post office I'll motor east to the co-op, buy the collar the sunflower seeds I wish they wouldn't start those wars.  I abjure the thought it comes from hell the thought not the abjuration.

The moment she called, the very instant the phone rang, the first rays of the day's sunshine broke free and shone like joy on the sward, the Osage orange and the lime hydrangea.  Wish I didn't have to get outta this old rocking chair and go to town.  But if not today, then when?