Off-season

The man with the handlebar mustache glances

up from the sidewalk as I walk by, then

immediately drops his eyes again, absorbed back

into the kingdom of his thoughts, pacing or

lying like hogs in heat. The afternoon is a like

a tired woman walking silently around him,

touching the scrubby trees, then his arm, so

he is forced to look up again and again, brushing

us both away with the world he makes, throwing

it at each of us, then carefully laying down

the road so that he can travel away from us

as we follow him, neither of us looking at the other.