Waiting
by Earl Coleman

In his Lincoln rocker, wrapped in afghans cousin Emily
crocheted before she died, John waits for Zeke, valise
already packed, secured by cord. He feels empty, gutted,
worried it’s his ticker off its track again, but knows that

that’s not it, this feeling like he’d left the hay mow door
ajar again, to let the wind and rain get in. Over tops of
square, thick spectacles he peers outside, as if he’s ready
for surprise, yet dreads that soon he’ll hear the sound of

Zeke’s Ford pick-up. Lets his eyes rest on his littered lawn -
Impala body-parts, two carburetors, jerry cans, the grim day,
gray, snowheavy, like the canvas hammock (hooked to locust
trees ten feet apart). The cold’s daubed icicles along the gapped

slate roof, the vinyl siding, cockeyed greening weathervane.
A grandpa oak, its wounds cemented, jackknife’s toward the
weathered wall, extending busted limbs, as if to say: “See these?
I can’t protect no more.” He feels the bony finger of his fear,

like that of his proctologist, invading him. Some vague regret
keeps nagging that he’s left things at loose ends. What could they
be he asks himself. Just that he’d never fixed the screen door
hinges or the buckled floor for Kathy, gone now, impetus long

disappeared to work a lick at it, arthritic fingers wouldn’t
let him, anyway. Underneath his shawls he hugs his flaccid
biceps, as though loathe to let things get away, give this up.
To see exactly what it is he leaves behind he casts an eye.

Not much. Wood stove. His sagging mattress, maybe twenty-five
years old. Unprepared for it, is what it was. Who kept in mind that
bodies, people, get worn out, can’t function any more, like some old
sump-pump you switch on to get the basement water out and find

it‘s shot? Sure, others failed, decayed before your eyes, but you
yourself were always solid as a rock. They must have been there once,
those days when he was full of piss and vinegar. He wills himself
to call them back, such days, remembers only Kathy with her dark

hair down, a spring night on the porch. He looks again out to the rusted
parts of old machines. On Conklin Hill he hears Zeke’s pick-up, coming
for him. Things die, is what it was. Not even oaks withstood erosion of
their soil or blight. The thing was he was poor. Poor and at the end of things.