Sometimes a small country church has a nice roadside wall
where a tired bicycle can lean and rest and I can sit beside it
since I am tired too.
And then his pickup flew by me close and parked in the yard
at the old house across the road. His road. And he glanced
over at me I saw as he grabbed his bagged tools from the
truck bed. And I worried some about that glance of his.
He was what we call a working man. Would not be reading
Dostoyevsky or Reinhold Niebuhr or even David Remnick.
Would not be knowing about things from anywhere but
Fox News, I thought. And might even holler across his road
to say I should not be sitting my woke ass on church property
like I was. And there could be worse things even.
The man went inside but then came back out and stood and
did holler. Hollered to ask if I was okay. As if he would
help me if I wasn’t. And I somehow managed thanks I’m
good, and he went back inside as I thought more about things
and was still thinking when he came back out and hollered
again. Asking if I needed some water he could bring me.
And I raised up my bottle to show and thanked him
anyway and soon rode on feeling good about him
but not so much about me.
