The sight of my neighbor limping to his front door
in the dim, late-evening light, walking from his truck,
down the driveway to the sidewalk, then toward the
front steps of his house, his bad arm nearly dragging
from his shoulder behind his back like some name
he can’t remember–an old friend from back in the day
when he lived closer to the city with plenty to do and
places to go–reminds me of how little I know of his story.
Just that his wife has a hard time staying sober long enough
so the cops don’t have to drag her away to jail. Just an idea
that when the liquor has left the blood that flows beneath
your skin, the cold, gray walls of a jail cell must look like
the hardest substance on Earth. Which is to say that it’s
so much easier for me to imagine being her than being him,
so much easier to think about things done wrong than things
lost. And he takes his good arm and stretches it straight in front
of him as he turns to pull his front door shut in time to get to
the television to watch the Sunday night game. His wife is
coming home again at the end of the month, when we’ll be
more than halfway through this third quarter season’s rush
toward winter, which is when he’ll need to crank up the wood
stove, sending rough blue smoke from the chimney toward
the sky in an effort to reach a temperature sufficient for him
to feel the tips of all his fingers, make the motions that make it
easy to believe it’s easy being alive, and that comfort is the warmth
and stillness of sitting near the heart of his hundred year old house.