In the book of manners that I rely on,
One chapter is devoted to keeping silent,
The one that reminds me now, as I pull off
On the shoulder of a country road to ask directions,
Not to ask the elderly man in overalls,
Who crosses the field to greet me,
Why he isn’t wearing a hat on a day so sunny.
If the sun has deepened the ruts in his face,
It’s too late now to stop it, the chapter reasons,
And why remind him how much he’s aged?
As for the blood-vessel cobwebs beneath his eyes—
For me a sign of drinking over many years—
The same chapter warns me not to suggest,
However gently, that help is available
If he wants to stop. Who knows what escape
I might have tried if I’d had his worries:
The flooding and drought and heavy mortgage,
The money he owes the hospital, though the treatment
Failed to buy his wife an extra day.
Already I owe him something for the reticence
That keeps him from probing when I inform him
I’m on my way to visit an old friend.
He doesn’t ask why I’ve come so seldom
That I can’t recall if I’m anywhere near the turnoff.
“You can’t miss it,” he simply says,
“Three miles straight ahead at the stand of sweet gum.”
And when my doubtful look suggests
I may find a sweet gum and never know it,
He fishes a pencil out of his bib pocket
And sketches its shape so deftly
That I’m certain I’d know it anywhere,
So deftly I need to resist the urge to ask
If he ever considered a career in art.
If he didn’t, it’s too late now to begin. If he did
But then decided against it, why finger that wound?
Then, before I’m tempted to ask about
The beautiful sunsets he must be able to witness
Above the hills to the west, it’s time to thank him
And drive off. Why take the risk,
I hear the chapter asking, of reminding him
Of sunsets he used to watch with a companion?
Let him think of those scenes just when he chooses,
When he’s in the mood for recalling
The words they used when they needed words
And the silence they liked to share.