Eli got in while Becky was at market w/ the kids;
the buggy was gone & no one but Rusty his neighbor
saw the Uber pull away from the      wooden     fence
& Eli walk with his head cast down;
he had the letter from Leonard
          telling him no one could now he had anything to do w/ the missing
                       Russian girls;
the cops were                  barking up the wrong tree,
Leo's favorite American expression;
Eli went inside &   went to his stash of corn liquor,
but then Rusty was at the door;
girl always barefoot (             ) in nothing but overalls;
not as Amish as all that;
her dad was a Mennonite                               & Eli
once      turned her onto                    some high-grade          medicinal ****
& told her all about the Medici's iron            rule
                    over the Renaissance;    the Enlightenment
brought Fascism the way              the French revolution
brought Napoleon    -   [Eli heard the buggy pull up to the house & hurried Rusty out the back door & across the field
where she stumbled & landed (                 ) flat on her face in the desiccated poppy patch he had polluted                          with pigments of every shade
& sparkle &              when Rusty rolled over       r       on her back
         the afternoon sun shone down;      shone down &    
she glittered in the fading sunlight; [         ,          ;          ]
Eli was trudging to the very spot where she lay,
after helping Becky         bring a few things in;
seeing his old neighbor half his    age sprawled on the ground
skin & overalls      sparkling like a rainbow        from all the loose pigment -
spread among the poppies; even bees  -
were day-glo blue & some were green & purple,
some red & artificially             yellow like some            tiny canary
[Eli didn't go back         into the house until hours later];
Becky was irritable b/c it was that time of month - red
& Eli didn't seem to care -  she knew where he was  [but she had no thought about Rusty; barely seventeen &
       probably gay - or so people said;
      [Rusty was not gay, at least not today, at least not w/ Eli right at the moment; the sun                        vanished replaced by stars' rays        ;        [Rusty finally made it home; her folks were old & asleep;
                         she'd meet Eli in the field again -
             [Eli read Leornard's note &   setting a match  to it     watched it       burn;  the paper cinder   withering            away to nothing
over the Ben Franklin [             ]                 stove;        
but given the way she felt,                  didn't dare go
up the hill; she didn't know what she       would say
but she knew it'd end in an argument
& she didn't want      the [stress=0]        right then ...     ;