Passages

David Walker

Frank Stanford 1949 - 1978

Sometimes when a man is old
enough to take his own life
soberly, he takes that life.

At dawn, the light blue with cold,
I go out past the corncrib
to the chickenrun, gripping
the shotgun; behind a pile
of grainsacks, I make my space
against the weather. Then wait-
taking the risk a man must
live by- for the fox to come
or not; the dead rooster hung
bloody by the cornerpost.

Sometimes when what you wait for
arrives, it's like a river
with a shifting undertow
stirring up silt and trouble.

I sit there for hours; gun
growing into my hands, eyes
held by the drip... drip slowing
beneath the body. Nothing
has come from across the cold
pasture, no leap to trigger
the dumb darkness alight.

And sometimes it's like
nothing at all. Then a man
may walk to the river, gun
in hand, to stir up his own
sober trouble. A taking pains
as though the current might clear
if he shadowed it forever.

David Walker