A note from the foreman

  My dearest Mrs. Rangell,

 Yesterday the crows turned mean and killed all of our chickens except for the scraggly ones that hide under the front porch all the time anyway. Jake, the new hired man, called it a sign that the End Times is nigh and so he left to be with his family in Mexico. He didn't even wait for his due wages because I would have had to go to town to get it out of the bank. Anyway, after Jake left the duck pond started to bubble and hiss and now smells like the ground around the septic pipes when it rains. I see a lot of dead frogs around that pond, which would really have scared Jake. Otherwise all goes well.

Prufrock meditations

 He sits and weaves impossibilities
 Memories of passions that could never be.
 Conquests of gals that didn't even know
 He'd come, he'd seen and taken his last bow.
 Wrong moves he made that now must be repaid
 By waves of winces, guilt that can not fade.
 In a lifetime of poorly picked comforts,
 Of miscast malice and wasted efforts
 He now moans and foams into the black void
 That no man who ever breathed could avoid.
 Belittled by riddles he never asked
  He peers into fearful dark that looms, aghast
 At the howl of time racing ever more fast
 As days rush by counting down to his  last