Dr. Hill’s Poet Author: Jeffrey Ross

Posted: August 20, 2021/Under: Uncategorized/By: Christine Young

Dr. Hill’s Poet: A sixty-three-year-old professor and his forty-one-year-old student fall deeply in love despite criticism from his university and their friends.

Dr. Hill’s Poet: General Fiction/Poetry

Buy at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, Google Play

BLURB: Dr. Hill’s Poet

A sixty-three-year-old literature professor and his forty-one-year-old student fall in love despite criticism (and moral judgement) from his university, the community, and their circle of friends. Sam and Cassie’s commitment to each other, and their love of poetry, sustains the relationship and brings them new awareness about the connections between art and life. Brought together by a powerful destiny, their romance is also nurtured by the world of nature and honest and direct communication. Dr. Hill’s Poetis richly descriptive of the Platte River Valley in central Nebraska. This pleasant and fast-moving story contains textual elements common to traditional fiction, poetry, and the screen play genre.

EXCERPT: Dr. Hill’s Poet

On a very warm November afternoon, Cassandra came out to the lake to visit with Hill. She brought along a box of runzas (a kind of hamburger roll) and loaded fries. The afternoon temperature was nearly seventy-seven degrees. A cold front was approaching and pushing warm air ahead of it. Snow was forecast in twelve hours, but the day felt like late summer. Hill had placed a card table and two folding chairs out on the floating dock. After greeting her, he went back inside to rummage around for two bottles of beer. When he came out, he didn’t see her at first.

She had taken off her long sleeve shirt and shorts. Cassandra was wearing a swimsuit and standing in the water near the place where the stream entered the lake. She stood just behind some cattails, and she was paying attention to a mid-size turtle who was trying to swim against the current, up the stream and out of the lake.

Hill sat down on one of the folding chairs and watched her. He noticed a tattoo of a butterfly (partially obscured by the swimsuit) on her shoulder. Wow. She was beautiful but so much more. Her face held a kind of Whitmanesque divinity for sure. She was teaching, and reaching, him by being. And they were one-ing, becoming one, rapidly, with a loving, unstoppable momentum.

Somehow, from his frame of reference, her physical beauty complimented, or complemented, her intellect and persona. Oh, she was a looker, for sure, but he could honestly say to himself he was attracted to her because of her total self-presentation. What’s that tired cliché: “Beauty is more than skin deep”? Hmm. In this case her beauty emanated from her core being or illuminated her core being. He had experienced nothing like this… or read anything to match his recent interactions with her. Why had the novelists and poets missed this characteristic, this process?

Sharing A Blanket

After dusk, when the chilled November air fell around them…

Her lips found his….

And their potent cosmic dance began.

Love’s sweetness overcame them swiftly.

Two people

embracing in the moonlight

Hearing just their beating hearts,

A harmonic cadence…

And the stream’s gentle pulse.

Yes, she gave her love to him…. without a monologue or explanation.

And he saw eternity in her perfect eyes, and they left the past behind….