The gun’s retort bring Jones to the window
To peer across his field with clouded eyes.
He sees a truck parked beside the road
He sees a splash of red, nothing more,
But enough to tell him the man who built
The house down the road in what was once
Jones’ hay field is hunting.
A shot rings out. “Hunting,” Jones exclaims.
He spits the word out like a gob of phlegm,
Cursing the noise that brought him from his chair
Beside the parlor stove that’s barely warm
To the window that is less than warm.
Yet another shot comes from the woods,
Answered by the “crack!” from the pine
That burns in the parlor stove behind him
Jones jumps, and then a tight-lipped smile
Creases the pale and gray-stubbled face.
“Good hunting,” Jones says aloud
In a shaky voice that sounds to him
Like an old lady’s. “Good hunting,”
He croaks the benediction once again
And shuffles back across the creaking floor
And sinks into the chair beside the stove.
In the cold and stealthy November dusk
Jones curses, then curses once again
The pain in his bones that makes him slow,
The age that forces him to sit alone
While someone else hunts in his woods.
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