WAITING FOR SNOW TIRES

You’d think we were waiting for bad news.

A red-haired woman in Raggedy Ann leggings holds on her lap an enormous hoop; she is quilting on black satin: golden stars, a silver moon. The village celebrity, solemn and tweedy, aware of his beard, discreetly refolds The New York Times. A woman even older than I sits still with her eyes closed, plastic shopping bags around her feet. Maybe she is listening to the music.

How far do you think we could get, all of us together, if we had a pickup truck and a sandwich or two?

The town crier in his cowboy suit and yellow hardhat stomps in, announcing The world is all f***ed up and it pisses me off. The tire man says Yes, yes, isn’t that so, and brings him coffee from the back room.

Somewhere up in the Continental Divide a trucker pulls over to chain up. In Houston someone makes a tiny correction to the orbit of a tiny moon. Tonight while we are sleeping it will slip unnoticed across our hoop of autumn sky.