A Sudden Calm
Old men puff cigars
as crows caw on wire,
and rain cleans the roofs,
spilling onto tarped stands,
knowing their few friends
may be dead tonight,
after saying goodbye
to wives, sisters;
sipping whiskey, sucking grease,
and as farmers with rough hands
push their red wheelbarrows,
small aside their skyward barns
that continue without expiration,
they wonder why the hawk
has yet to swoop down,
while their nests are gone;
those younger and healthier,
on the edges of villages
where prosperity is organic
and swallowed with silver
utensils; these old men
have inhaled every chemical
and sniffed the high
in all things.
God has been favorable, one says,
God has been most cruel, another,
and they drink until the sun roams
far enough, the moon returning
to their table; like a soul, a beating heart,
imagining if it was them being remembered;
being the last of your confidantes
and kinsfolk, tombstone ancestors,
the trail begins to knot with bramble,
and the park rangers cede
this one to nature.
تعليقات