At the window, briefly

The old man who lives in the big yellow-clapped house

overlooking the Bay at the southern end of the road

returns from his walk with his aging Siberian Husky.

There he goes, across my westward line of sight at the window,

holding the leash in his right hand and a small plastic see-

through baggie in his left hand.

The old-timer wears dark prescription sunglasses whose lenses

seem the size of teacup saucers; his posture is curved forward at the torso

which is to be expected, and his face exhibits an unflinchingly stern

expression, also to be expected.

He clutches the neck of the baggie containing the solid remnants

of the Husky's early morning necessity, firmly, his forearm running

parallel to the road ahead, bent at the elbow and at a right angle to his torso,

although his posture skews the sharpness of the angle to some degree.

The forearm rocks like a mechanism set to open and close repeatedly.

A young woman peddling her bike, zips passed him, northbound toward

the avenue, her fast bike as thin as a whisper, quickly clicking through

one of its 30 gears, and disappears from view. 

Slower-paced, the husky trots ahead, leaving a little slack in the leash,

perhaps out of sympathy, but otherwise seeming to be uninterested

in the chance meeting between the two human principals.
They too, disappear from the strict parameters of the window,

leaving in place the unoccupied, brilliant late summer landscape.

I was fortunate to have witnessed the moment;

an old man at the portal to an eternity of all things left somewhere else,

and the young woman riding fast into the prime of her being, and
a good-looking Siberian Husky with a pleasant disposition,
cast in a landscape framed exclusively for their 15 second exhibition.

Swansea