He hurriedly glanced at his wristwatch again,
The shadow of the cross from the steeple
Landing in the middle of the watch.
A sigh echoed through the church courtyard,
And a few rats scurried out of their hide-aways.
They should be here by now.
The moon hung in the sky,
Trying and failing to shed light on what was below.
The harsh noise of a truck on gravel reached his ears,
And he breathed a sigh of relief.
The newcomer parked the truck and lumbered out,
Holding several filthy beer bottles in his large, grimy hands.
“Here you go.”
His voice was gruff, calloused even, as if it was being
Grated like cheese.
Money from the priest’s hands went into the driver’s hands,
And when the priest looked into his eyes,
They spoke legends of ******.
The truck drove away, and
Pretty soon the courtyard was silent again,
Except for the hoot of an owl,
The contented sigh of the priest, and the
Pop of a beer bottle being opened.

Death lives within these walls.
It seeped up through the attic rafters,
Settled down in the furthest recesses,
And it waited for me.

I know you, Death.
We become more familiar with each passing day.
You are the movement in my peripheral in an empty room;
The whisper in my ear originating from nowhere;
The hair on my arms and neck standing, unprovoked;
The unease slowly building within me.

The cat knows you, too.
I see her watching you as you move throughout the house,
Never turning her back to you.
She is protecting me.
Even when you call her name, she will not leave my side.
She arches her back in warning when you get too close -
Is she warning you to stay away?
Or warning me that you are approaching?

I sense you are getting stronger, Death.
I feel you when you slink up beside me and linger there -
But yesterday you touched me.
It froze me to my soul, and to the spot where I was standing.
Unable to move.
Unable to breathe.
Gripped by a terror I've never known before,
But understand I will know again.

My light is slowly fading into your darkness
And I feel helpless to stop it.
What do you want from me, Death?
And how far will you go to get it?

Some in my family say
Uncle Sam was my salvation
when I was a young man
hell, maybe so, I don’t know
but he kept me out of jail
and paid for my education
which is how I found myself
in West Memphis, Arkansas
surveying Indian mounds
that some fool professors thought
were put there by the Choctaw
but I knew they’d got it wrong
all along, it was the Mississippians
which makes perfect sense if you think
on it considering where they put ‘em
but I digress, I must confess it
was my fondness for backroad bars
and blues guitars carved from wood
of crosses burnt by drunks in hoods
and strings plucked by calloused fingers
of old men with shoulders slumped
like sagging barns and Ford pickups
you find out in them parts, singing
songs about long gone women, all
kinds of aching age old pains lingering
enough to make a man’s heart rain
until the US Army Corps of Engineers
blew the levy’s to send those tears
out across cotton fields and mounds
I know the Choctaw didn’t build.

Caught in a puddle of sunlight,
unable to move...
I sip my tea
and watch the moon.