Most winter days,
passing that
wreck of a house
all wrapped
in plastic,
you do not
find him. It just
sits by the ramp
to 89 like
a great loaf
of bread. Yet
there are times
just before
your mind closes
on the traffic
toward Concord, you see
the slow, black
coat of Cooch.
He will be out
on his failed
porch, studying
a tire of something
without a drawer.
Some nights you see him
in a room beyond
his plastic-covered
windows, moving
in the afterlife
of ruined things.
-Wesley McNair