A Sunday Afternoon in Loachapoka

The crisp click of boot against porch
Followed by a steady slide of grinding grit and dust
Blown from the road to settle underneath
His foot
Signaled another downswing in the chair

The talk turned to grass clippings and
Moving a mound of dirt from one side of the yard
To the other
While the wind blew Old Glory against the
First National

More than five minutes passed
And we sat stone faced as
The trees cut the sunlight into
Parallelograms on the grass and the air felt light
As September began to show her age.