It’s Prosery Monday at the dVerse Poets Pub!
Prosery is prose that includes a line from a poem. I will give you the line, and then you incorporate it into a short prose piece. This can be either flash fiction, nonfiction, or creative nonfiction, but it must be prose! And it must be no longer than 144 words, not including the title. It does not have to be exactly 144 words.
“In their dreams they sleep with the moon.”–From Mary Oliver, “Death at Wind River”
It all started early one morning when Hank and Billy were walking to school. There was a big math test that day for which neither boy had studied.
A slow-moving train was passing with several empty box cars.
“Whaddaya say?” Hank grinned and nodded toward the train.
“Hell, yeah!” Billy ran for the train with Hank right behind him. They tossed their schoolbooks overboard once they made it into a box car, never looking back.
That was 40-some years ago, and they were still riding the rails together.
Occasionally Hank and Billy pondered what their lives may have been like had they just taken the damned math test and stayed in school, but both agreed that nothing could beat the hand life had dealt them.
The adventures they’d shared far outweighed any amount jailtime they’d done.
In their dreams they sleep with the moon.
Whatcha think?