Only Love Could Pick A Nested Pair

It's Always Been Hard For Me To Tell The Difference Between Denial And What Used To Be Known As Hope.

There Were So Many Pittsburgh Poets In My Hallway That If, At That Instant, A Meteorite Had Come Smashing Through My Roof, There Would Never Have Been Another Stanza Written About Rusting Fathers And Impotent Steelworkers And The Bessemer Convertor Of Love.

The Little Boy Had Wandered Away From His Mother, Tacking Across The Grass Toward The Play Structure. His Mother Watched Him Go, Proud, Tickled, Unaware That Every Time They Toddled Away From You, They Came Back A Little Different, Ten Seconds Older And Nearer To The Day When They Left You For Good. Pearl Divers In Training, Staying Under A Few Seconds Longer Every Time.

In Later Years, Holding Forth To An Interviewer Or To An Audience Of Aging Fans At A Comic Book Convention, Sam Clay Liked To Declare, Apropos Of His And Joe Kavalier's Greatest Creation, That Back When He Was A Boy, Sealed And Hog-tied Inside The Airtight Vessel Known As Brooklyn, New York, He Had Been Haunted By Dreams Of Harry Houdini.

The Instructor, Ms. Pease, Also Taught In The Church's Religious School, And She Had A Sunday School Manner At Once Saccharine And Condemnatory.