drought times

after his wife left my distant cousin

lieutenant sam greene cradles his sandwich in his left hand, keys the lock, and slides the barn door back across the foundation. inside, the barn resonates kerosene, a dusty atv slanted in a parked line beneath the gritty window. he makes his way past a barrel with broken axe handles and martin house poles that would go back up in the spring. and then he stops, crunches his ham on buttered white, and wonders why. or maybe it’s a what. yes. a what. he notices a snow shovel propped against the rear wheels behind the jimmy. last night’s six inches to handle.

and that’s about when he pulled the knotted rope that yanked the bare bulb sizzling and popping like a dusty, glowing mummy. and in this womb inside the blurring drifting february snow, behind the mowing tractor up on blocks, he thought he saw something swinging. then a pair of timberlands. Overalls the color of burlap. and a faded green jacket, like the color of leaves that fall too early in august. And, with one hand on the cord, he stared at a swaying, broken, blue balloon. the face cocked right and limp, like a flag, like there was something he wanted to say.