The Old Man

The old man fingers the moist soil.

In its small white cup topped with a pencil poked flimsy lid.

So the air can sneak in.

For the worms to live.

To simply die.

A sacrifice.

He sifts around the foam mollusk.

Avoids the pearls.

Like kernels at the bottom of a buttery bowl.

Pushes them aside.

Finds a fat brown here, pink there crawler.

Pinches it. Snips it in two with his thumbnail.

He hears it will regrow.

As if to make a blanket, he corn stitches the incher to his hook.

Satisfied. He drops the line.

He waits.

The sun shows him himself.

The silver wigglers in his own curly crown.

Taloned brows that make a pile of laundry out of his face.

The little red and white ball blinks.

Or

did

it? The old man dares the shine to give him the answer.

He tugs the string that hangs down.

Over the name stitched across his chest.

The one zippered in half.

Of the campus found in the small town where he has lived. His whole life.

A quaker flake shaken from its cardboard silo dries itself to the fleecy inside turned out.

At his crook.

He steals a lift. Pulls the stick. Nothing yet.

Puts it back.

He remembers.

The one that got away.

Or he let go?

After all these years, he is not sure.

She wore yellow.

She spoke in rhymes.

She sat on benches and watched the waves.

She smelled of tomatoes plucked from the vine.

Her eyes were the color of strawberry leaves.

The red blinds most to the beauty of the flower’s lover.

Not him.

The old man sits. Alone.

Until the yellow turned orange fades into blue. The hues disappear together.

Like a pinkie promise to never leave, they steep in the cup turned upside down above.

His canvas chair falls upon itself.

He handles his barren Igloo.

The old pickup waiting a pace takes him home.

The old man climbs his century-old wrap-around porch and thinks of fresh fruit in summer.