Mind you, when Wiley
is invited to the gallery for breakfast,
Jeff makes crepes,
wondrous with a color wheel of toppings,
including homemade peach ice cream
cranked out by the artist himself.
When Jeff arrives,
Wiley offers him an adult beverage—
PBR because Wiley doesn’t like the way
other beer companies treat the environment.
Wiley puts supper on.
It’s quite a production, Jeff notices,
with all the elaborate preparation
of Wiley opening a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew.
While most of the major food groups simmer,
Wiley tidies up.
Aiming a small yogurt container
toward the pail for plastics,
he inspects it first—
the kind with an aluminum foil tab that pulls off.
Why this isn’t good for nothing,
he shakes his head with all the despair
of a mother bird in a nest full of mites.
They carry chairs to the lake.
Their lives depend on food, water, shelter,
and art—the joy of life
that causes them to want
to come in out of the rain
and eat, drink, and be merry.
What do these great minds
ponder on this pinnacle of evenings?
No recordings of Wordsworth and Coleridge
gazing across mountain lakes
on hikes through Scotland,
Jeff and Wiley’s conversation
plucks the lake surface—
to ring outward as whole notes
into the music of the spheres.
Jeff will be left to remember
these moments on this island of time,
PBRs safely wedged in the grass,
no place to rest his bowl of stew
except on the imaginary last supper table
at Wiley’s Last Resort.
-Hilda Downer
from Wiley's Last Resort. Hickory: Redhawk Publications, 2022.
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