An Old Man Settles In

The cottage stands alone.
Its veranda posts are askew,
the hand-swan walls buckled.
At its heart is a coal-range.
Its wooden floor is shiny with wear.
At night the old farmer comes in alone.
He lights the range with sticks and his gut with liquor.
Sometimes there is more of the latter.
He flings open the range door and eases his feet in.
There is no food.
No music.
No wife.
As the heat trickles out, he listens to the night:
the wind in the grass, the swoop of a bird.
Sometimes, the scratch of a possum.
He hears his dogs, too, stretching the chain.
As the cold falls, so too his chin.