Old woman sits on rocking chair like a queen on her throne gathering robes around her in royal pose with a shaft of sunlight entering window in godly favor. White hair as silver-lined clouds drifts around her face while she rocks back and forth light to dark, light to dark. Silent in her reverie her
Gray-whiskered man lies on the ground; his arm pillows his head like mother’s hand when she held his babyhood. Eyes closed in sleep memory; a smile softens his face as he listens to his radio – music of static blankets his soul beyond crowds.
Old man stands ankle-deep in pasture grass dry in August. He contemplates the ground as if looking for something lost – Pocket knife? Metal car? Toy gun? Like an escaped prisoner a cricket scurries through brittle stems uncaring of silence just fleeing. Old man digs lint from his pockets, allows it to drift like dandelion
my gums are receding, but on the good side – I’ve finally gotten a superpower, invisibility. Well, at least to young attractive women, I’m invisible. They stare past me as if I were transparent and sometimes they even walk right through me. Really. I ought to remind them of physics, but that’d be yet another
5 hours in a sun so blistered trying to hitch a ride out of Alamogordo – pasty-faced seniors in Winnebagos for some odd reason not trusting my long-haired bearded self – I gave up. Called my old man to wire me bus fare. In Amarillo I had an hour layover, walked the main drag at
Even the long-incarcerated need adequate vision care, so don’t bat an eye when a stern sort in uniform escorts an elderly gentleman in orange to his shoes, wrists and ankles shackled, chains tinkling across the carpet and its office quiet to a room unseen to the sitters who wait in phones, magazines, and leisure only
I’m standing in a pumpkin patch on Friday morning, watching some rot even though I can’t perceive the progress to the blackening, to the bottomless depression, and the crawling scavengers enjoying the pulp while I ponder the significance of being here at 10:30 a.m. in October without work, esteem, or income, still like these gourds
