(“Meanwhile, friends, wait patiently for
the Master’s Arrival.” James 5:7 [The Message])
It had been ages since he had seen the sun. Huddled
behind windows covered in gauze and duct tape,
he wondered how the world had turned while
he hid hoping for safety.
Occasionally peeking through the cracks in
the casements
he knew it was near noon. He knew-later than soon-
that lunch would resume around the kitchen table.
He opened the fridge for another beer and a second
boiled egg. The air conditioning purred while summer
lasted longer than expected.
The postman walked past his house again. It had been
weeks since he opened an envelope at all.
No one knew him, no one knew him at all.
They had met him leaving for the grocery store,
they had seen him mowing his lawn. Hellos were
exchanged,
but the exact nature of his arrangement with life
never came up. Conversations ended with nods and
a dozen steps beyond his front yard. No one knew
if he lived alone, although most people suspected it.
He wanted to know if the clouds had obscured the sun,
if the heat of the day had been sifted through the colander of
mist from off the coast. He wanted to see the waves
he waded in as a child one more time.
The teenager next door practiced jazz on the
saxophone.
He listened like a robin pacing the ground.
The notes were embodied raindrops, they were
wordless like his soul. He knew the songs,
they were the standards: Ellington, Basie, and
Brubeck. He opened the window for the first time
in years
to hear the way the music made him feel like
the mornings he spent with the sun on his back
and the magic of a girl who took his hand one time
waiting in line after recess.
