The Connectedness of All Things

by Chet Corey
 
A man in a red windbreaker and baseball cap
turns and walks back toward his house,
hands in his pockets, the garbage wheeled out
for Monday on a country road without a curb.
And tomorrow he will wheel the cart back,
set it beside the garage with the regularity of one
who has gone through a day of corporate work
and has a wife he will expect to find in the kitchen,
his supper warm, the other rooms darker with twilight.
He has not found a name for what will change.

The week will start out right, his wife will not leave
him for another until there are enough miles
on the Olds to trade up to a Caddy. Here is
the connectedness of all things St. Augustine
could not have considered carried to extreme:
the garbage wheeled out for Monday morning,
set beside the road by a man in a windbreaker
who walks toward his house, hands in his pockets,
his face in shadow beneath the bill of a cap,
like a grackle looking for seed among gravel.

© 2003 by Chet Corey. All rights reserved.
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