Yesterday, as we were eating dinner, the phone rang. Tom answered, and the rest of us listened in. At first we assumed it was a junk call, but then he started making remarks such as "Yes, she lives here." "Yes, she does write books." The boys and I looked at each other, mystified. Finally, Tom said, "Would you like to talk to her?" So he handed over the phone, and I said hello.

It turns out that, on the other end of the line, was a very old woman, who had read an article in the paper about a poet who lived in Harmony. She had never heard of such a thing and decided to find out for herself. So she looked up my number in the phone book and called to see if this poet rumor was true.

After I'd verified that I did in fact write poems, she mentioned that she'd always liked to read poems, though I didn't ever find out what kinds of poems she liked to read. The whole thing was rather embarrassing, and I got flustered and forgot to ask the right questions. But anyway she seemed pleased to have had a conversation with a poet, though all we did was talk about what road I lived on and who had owned the land previously. Unlike poetry, land history is regular rural small talk. What I should have done is to ask her if she knew any poems by heart. Then maybe I would have gotten to hear some Longfellow or Tennyson or something. That would have been sweet.