News of the World

 This appeared in Candelabrum.

Mr Paul Riley of Decatur writes

to say strange doings have invested his

quiet suburban neighborhood, Sea Views.

Middle to upper-middle class, he says

Sea Views is, mostly ranch-style homes, two-car

garages, lots of grass, and too few trees.

Mostly professionals, says Mr Riley,

chiropodists and CPAs, their kids

and lives no different than yours, he says—

which doesn't make them good, only familiar.

Well, we say that; to tell the truth, he didn't.

Fourteen police calls in the last two months,

all for the same offense, if that it is:

a misshaped man running across the rooftops

in tarry night, clomping over the shingles,

those blue asbestos ones, heavy of foot,

but featly nonetheless, and leaping far

to span the voids between the houses, too

broad of a space for any man to jump.

Det. Abercrombie says he has

no clues, no evidence, no damage done—

not even a crime exactly, just an upset:

a man, if man he be, where none belongs.

Det. Abercrombie doesn't like them,

anomalies in Sea Views, when the whole

point of a Sea View is to get away

from aberrations, which are doing well

and thriving, thank you, in the bigger city,

if that is what Decatur is, and, no,

Det. Abercrombie didn't say that.

So, if you have some information bearing

on running rooftop gargoyles in the States,

(we'll rain in gold on you for photographs),

call us no charge, 1-800-BIG NEWS.

And, Mr Riley, please, sir, keep in touch.