Season in the Dark

A stone-faced man sits in a folding chair
at the edge of his lawn. He’s facing out
toward the street, where the threat awaits.

He glares at me as if I am the threat, or
the promise of the war he will be forced
to wage. The war he has been promised

to win. He resembles the old man who sat
behind the wheel of my sons’ school bus
for a time. Inscrutable what he held in mind,

in check, to himself and beneath the effort
of words. Everyone—everyone—is a slick
seed dropped in the earth and left for a season

in the dark. I want to tell him: Sleep well, brother.
Soon we will be weeds or flowers together.