The Hunter

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.