At the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum

PL, Ozarks in the fall

 

         

Hasten, hasten all

writers –you who’re interested

in ‘one true sentence.’

 

Come to the old barn

where E. H. once wrote

parts of A Farewell . . . .

 

Surrounded by ghosts,

his typewriter, leopard-skin

rugs, whispers of lust,

 

we focus efforts

hoping to channel Papa:

whittle words to nubs,

 

to gist and gut--tight.

Here, imaginations flit,

soar, break boundaries

 

found at home, office.

As if drunk, we do battle,

fill page upon page,

 

exult in fatigue.

A Story. Begun. Finished.

Let’s drink to Papa! Hear, hear!

~~ 

 

[PL, critiqued, Lucidity workshop, 4.23.'14, with no suggestions for improvement. Thanks to PRA state critic, Todd Sukany, for encouraging me to work on the original, published in an earlier H-P anthology. The result was this poem.]