Читать книгу Splitting an Order - Ted Kooser - Страница 9

Two Men on an Errand

The younger, a balloon of a man

in his sixties with some of the life

let out of him, sags on the cheap couch

in the car repair shop’s waiting room.

Scuffed shoes, white socks, blue trousers,

a nondescript gray winter jacket.

His face is pale, and his balding head

nods with some kind of palsy. His fists

stand like stones on the tops of his thighs —

white boulders, alabaster — and the flesh

sinks under the weight of everything

those hands have squeezed. The other man

is maybe eighty-five, thin and bent

over his center. One foot swollen

into a foam-rubber sandal, the other

tight in a hard black shoe. Blue jeans,

black jacket with a semi tractor

appliquéd on the back, white hair

fine as a cirrus cloud. He leans

forward onto a cane, with both hands

at rest on its handle as if it were

a steering wheel. The two sit hip to hip,

a bony hip against a fleshy one,

talking of car repairs, about the engine

not hitting on all the cylinders.

It seems the big man drove them here,

bringing the old man’s car, and now

they are waiting, now they have to wait

or want to wait until the next thing

happens, and they can go at it

together, the younger man nodding,

the older steering with his cane.