Some crackling corn stalks stood waiting on the implements to come cut them down surveyed by a buzzard banking its black waxed feathers above the hot spot, the heated wind an excuse for the old Rembrandt man to stay indoors
Before asphalt mirages waved solar radiation off the new road past his shack it was limestone dust that coughed a hundred years of agony behind the wagon wheel way back when obituaries were delivered by your neighbor instead of the newspaper
His face looked as cracked as a mud bed under the Comanche sun His bluebonnet eyes didn't mind the weeds no more ~ esthetics not being as important when you get past a certain age except the area around both tombstones engraved with "Baby Angel"
And when the rooster crowed on Sunday he'd travel down the road a ways to New Life Church where they taught the meaning of life and death so he could carry on another dawn at the little farm he called Almost Heaven