COME TO CALL
We heard him holler
from the back bedroom,
“Mama, tell them boys to wait, I’m just
about done fixing up my boot lace.”
But what he didn’t know was, the county sheriff
was waiting too, with one deputy shouldering a rifle
out by the barn, and another, pistol drawn, hunkered
down beside his old man’s car.
Sheriff spoke up and said you best move along, something
about us not interfering with the law, that Ned was
a fugitive of justice, with outstanding warrants of arrest,
one for an attempted murder of a bank teller
across the state line, over in Pine Bluffs, Arkansas.
He went on.
“Seems you boys don’t know much about
your friend here, Ned, and the other company
he keeps, when the rest of you follow seasonal work,
he’d rather rob a bank slinging a gun.”
Well, our jaws just about dropped off right
there and then. We piled into J. D.’s
Chevy pick up truck and took off.
About a half mile or so down the road, we all seen
a dark cloud hanging above Ned’s place;
that’s when the gunfire cracked and popped.
His Mama set the burial for Sunday morning
after church.
We dressed up clean and proper
to attend, some weeping, I mean, Ned
wasn’t a bad sort of a boy after all, but
we sure as hell wouldn’t be calling on him anymore.
Bruce Michael Foley about Bruce Michael Foley. I was born across the bridge from Boston, Massachusetts, in Cambridge, as July 4th fireworks exploded over the Charles River, just a stone’s throw from Harvard University. At age two, my family moved to Somerville, Ma.,where I was raised in a rough blue-collar environment, playing many sports. In 1998 I relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada. Here, I work among special needs children and teach martial arts. Poetry began in high school, but took off in a more dedicated way in later years, along with resuming music studies, guitar. My poems are published in various anthologies; including Impressions, Prism, and the Mighty Voices Of Thunder Series, sponsored by the international poetry website, “Allpoetry.” I was a featured poet in Lyrical Somerville February 2015, a Boston based publication, as well as being an “Editor’s Front Page Pick,” for the month of March 2016 on Allpoetry. A defining moment that contributed significantly to further interest in writing was a First Place Award from the International Poetry Fellowship, for my poem, “Among Fields of Cotton.” Presently, I am happy to have the opportunity to explore various forms of poetry with Mr. Bruce Isaacson, Poet Laureate of Clark County Nevada.