A Noise Outside

Are you ok? she texts from the RV
—yes, why?
I heard something. Outside.
—I walked an hour ago. That maybe?
No, she says. It was just now.
—probably nothing.
Probably, she says, and goes silent

She has two more days
Of self-isolation—
Close contact with Covid.
I count the minutes.
2,800 of them, more or less,
And lie on the bed
Thinking of Hemingway
And the guy who
Just got tired of it all.

There is corn this year
In the surrounding fields.
Last year was soybeans
And next year will be soybeans,
Which are never tall enough
to make a privacy fence.
This year the corn
Just barely high enough now
To crawl concealed down the rows.
Still, she heard something.
Probably nothing.

Probably an animal
Knocked something over.
Possum maybe. Raccoon?
Out here in the country
It could be anything.
Coyote,
Like the one
Shot and dumped
By Second Amendment thugs
A few hundred yards
Down the road.
The one I watched decay
Last fall week after week
Gorgeous animal
Now hidden within all the lushness
Of plants gone wildly heliotropic.

No, not a coyote.
Not yet the soft glow of torches
Nor the gentle clatter of pitchforks,
Or the pitter-patter feet of the rabble.
Probably nothing.
Or the wind?
Occam’s Razor is such a help
In times like these.

Admittedly too much light in here.
Split bamboo blinds with a gap.
Night lights.
Two digital clocks,
With differing opinions.
And even when I unplug
The night lights,
Adjust the gaping blinds,
Still, too much light.

Amanpour goes on
About the latest
Russian atrocit—

When all goes black
Except the clocks.
A long moment
When I am something feral,
Caught in the glare of wtf,
Just as the fridge coughs in apology
And resurrects its way back to chill.

All resumes.
The clocks still politely
Agree to disagree.

A memory peeks out
From behind the curtain of time
And I am a boy again
Fearing my drunken stepfather
Will finally come through that door
And kill the kid who will not
Call him father.
Let us call that child
Me.

The notes me hid for the cops,
The times me slept
Beneath the bed.
A lifetime ago.
How me made a dummy
Of my clothing and a pillow
And lay beneath the bed listening.
Listening until exhaustion
Slapped me into too-tired-to-care.

Even as it is happening
Once again,
With the clocks
Bravely marching out-of-step through time,
Little tin soldiers escorting the minutes forward,
With the beautiful princess
Having not quite two more days
Of self-isolation,
With the coyote well-hidden in lushness
Beyond hurt, romping in eternity,
And the thirsty corn
Silently growing.

28 June 2022