(Parodist begins, chording his Celtic harp in E major:)

Oh, give me a home
That is far from the groan
Of the asphalt that bakes in the sun,
Where cattle-grazed hills
(Not the piles of my bills)
Give awe to my ham of a son.

(Parodist and Fraysters sing:)

Home, home on the range,
Where the irritant prairie dogs play,
Where seldom is heard
E'en a trivial word,
For what can an absent man say?

(Foobs to Parodist, spoken, while harp chords continue in E major:)

You know, that last stanza sounds almost Zen. How do you do things like that?

(Parodist replies:)

I'm not quite sure; the laws of chance don't work normally around me. Anyway, I tend to agree with Winnie-the-Pooh: the best part of poetry lies in "letting things come"...which I think we'd better keep on doing now.

(Parodist sings:)

I hope that you'll live
In a place that can give
All the peace that the world sorely lacks --
A place where there's time
For a child to learn rhyme,
Evading the Foober's attacks. :)

(Foobs and the other Fraysters sing softly:)

Moan, moan on the Fray,
Ev'ry Tuesday precisely at nine.
Just stop by the store
(Even though it's a chore),
And hear us all holler and whine.

(Foobs sings:)

O Rabbit, take care;
E'en a crazy old hare
Can be blinded by faux holy light.

(Parodist sings:)

I may have been had;
Still, a chunk is not bad --
That horse, leave aside in its plight.

(Foobs and Parodist sing together:)

When, when will they learn
To stop when the fire has burned
The length of the fuse?
We are not quite amused
When duds ev'ry Tuesday return.

(Parodist, Foobs and Fraysters sing forte:)

Oh, oh what dismay!
We guess it just doesn't pay
For Rabbit to write
When he can't sleep at night,
Thus zombie-like on the next day.

(Parodist ends in his best imitation of Bugs Bunny:)

And...that...ain't...hay!

wr ()()
---------------------

Here there are places remarkable
for how no one ever comes—no asphalt,
no people, no trivia:

only hills, creeks, cattle.

Some irritating prairie dogs protected
by environmental urgency,
who are interesting,
even comic, even as they
wreck the place.

I hope you get to live somewhere like this,
so much yourself you could take charge
of such a solid stand of hills,
you could receive this holy light,
keen and fleeting.

At every moment the valley brimming,
the valley empty.

—Though you are nearly always happy,
and this place does not seem happy.

Happiness is for
******************—what? whom?

The one wish, it is my one wish.

Oh, you're such a ham, who would you amuse—

the horse, the white horse on his hill?