I had a neighbor once,
a blind man who said
he hadn’t eaten trout since the war,
since he lost his sight.
So early one morning
I caught a bunch
and went to his house
and fried them up in bacon grease
just like he liked them.
And we ate for a couple of hours or so
in the silence
of our connection
in the dark of his kitchen
on a cool summer day.

(Note: A friend of mine, Laura Ritchie, ( http://lauraritchie.com ) is a musician in England who teaches at the University of Chichester. She is putting out the call to create a music/art/words experience around the theme of hope and change and positivity in a world that has an inordinate amount of gloom. She is thinking of somehow connecting what she gets with the song These Times Are a Changing (Peter, Paul & Mary and, later, Bob Dylan) so a mutual friend of Laura's and mine, Alan Levine (a.k.a. cogdog on this site) recorded some chords. So.... I listened to Cogdog's playing and then wrote the above. I took a risk. I let whatever comes, come. And then I recorded a narration and put cogdog's guitar in the back track.)