The horse pulling Mike and Jane through Central Park is at the end of a long day, and near the sailboat pond, where Stuart Little is stranded on his yacht, the horse sags to its knees and will not get up,
while in Paris, the young women and her Arabian lover slip into the back seat of an armored Mercedes and cling together as the driver takes off like a started deer
that runs from red jackets deep in the Maine woods but is not quick enough and Evan, who last week missed a buck with fourteen points, empties his shotgun into the trees,
while the man, who has been enraged into violence is emptying his gun, shot by shot, up and down the floors of a Chicago high-rise,
as in New Orleans, a blues singer leans against the microphone and tries to swallow it with her song, wishing she had a man in her life to torch to, the flame of her voice hot
as the fire that Sammy has just lit in the basement of a house on Park Street where he has been hiding from The Man and where he doesn't know the people upstairs have three children and a dog, though he hears some of their noises when he's sober,
like Peter who on Vancouver Island is too drunk to check the oyster farm before the tide sweeps in, loses his harvest for the day and will get a whack from his missus who is about ready to call it a day on Peter,
as is Sadie in Reno, who has filed the papers and awaits the decree to be rid of her old man who will never hit her again. She will not go back to Rye where Gordon will wake up to the empty bed and see her clothes are gone,
as they are in San Diego, blown off Rita's clothesline by an on-shore wind strong enough to have a name, Clara and Clara, full of gusto, is ready to take all the West coat clothes as trophies, carry them up to San Jose,
where once-pretty Sally has only the dress she is wearing, most of its seams a sorry mess and if Sally can hold on to something steady, Clara will carry all those wind-gathered clothes and drop them before Sally like an offering,
as Mark is kneeling in The Church of the Crucifixion having lit a candle to Maynard, killed last week by a hit and run on a pot-holed street in Syracuse, the offering flickering out,
just as Jane's and Mike's horse sinks to its knees in Central Park and will not get up.
Ms. Follett is Publisher and Co-Editor of RUNES, A Review of Poetry.
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