View from under the pew

Editor’s note: Amos is a church mouse, who types by hopping on the keyboard letters, and he can’t operate the capital shift, and he shuns punctuation marks – except dashes and hyphens.

The fruit peddler

boss there s a little

farmer earthworm here

named ernie who raises

veggies and fruit on the

land he and his family tills

during harvest season

ernie pushes his fruit

and veggie cart through

the highways and byways

of the church pew

underworld

to be honest boss i don t

know how he pushes that

cart around with him

having no arms or legs to

speak of methinks he

wears this tiny thimble as a

crash helmet and bumps

the cart with his head

from place to place

and i have no idea how he

manages to harvest all

those fruits and vegetables

i suspect he hires out

grasshoppers and locusts

as day laborers but don t

hold me to that boss

ernie is a quiet little

earthworm in fact boss

nearly all earthworms are

fairly quiet they just

don t do that much

shouting while they re

above ground

what they do underground

i dunno

at any rate when harvest

season comes round so

does little ernie

one day after he passed by

i noticed a tiny micro-

cassette recorder lying

near the spot where his

cart had been

being a somewhat naturally

curious churchmouse i

picked it up and rewound

it and listened for a moment

at the start of the tape i

was surprised to hear ernie s

voice uttering these words -

for his body s sake which

is the church -

then throughout the rest

of the tape there were

scriptural quotations and

ernie s notations such as -

the following were absent

from sunday school last

sunday be sure to visit them -

or another one that said -

ask about the sick baby -

a little later ernie s voice

said - leave fruit for the

blind ladybug -

still further on ernie noted -

speak a word of cheer to

the old crippled cricket -

and finally a last notation -

invite the new family of

water bugs to church sunday -

boss the next day i handed

the tiny cassette to the humble

little peddler and i says to him

i wonder if you might have

dropped this yesterday

yes i guess i did he says

it s my tape of reminders

as i call them thank you

very much

then i told him that i had

listened to the tape a bit

and was a little curious

about it all

well the message at the

first of the tape is my

motive my reason for

doing things - for his

body s sake which is

the church -

then boss he looks at

me and smiles this

beaming smile -

you see says he it keeps

my mouth and mind all a hum

my heart above life s fuss

my spirit out of the

doldrums and my soul

out of the dust

amos