between the road and the creek
is a big umbrella with a broken rib
shading a faded tiger-striped couch.
Where a man not quite old,
but feeling the stack of his years
on the back of his neck dozes
and drifts into a leaf-scented dream.
He misses the dead grocery store,
the smell of leaded gasoline,
one pound cans of crab meat,
and non-filtered cigarettes.
Making kites with the funnies
and balsa wood sticks,
tails from old cotton sheets.
Warm wind nudging the spring grasses.
Deeper, slower. Now he dreams
of an ironing board doing jumping jacks,
and a refrigerator winks and smiles.
A teapot whistles the Andy Griffith Show theme.
A leaf falls from the arched branches
above him, flutters and spirals,
alights on his cheek. He wakes to
the scent of bay laurel, like his grandpa’s
Old Spice aftershave. The long ago
twelfth birthday present -a red leather
King James with his name embossed
on the cover inlaid with gold leaf.
And the words of the prophet Isaiah that
were his favorite, embossed on his mind
in that world with the kites, the perfume
of gasoline, and dancing ironing boards:
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock:
and dust shall be the serpent's meat.
They shall not hurt nor destroy
in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.
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