The cock’s tail, cocked up, enameled —
so the red flag on the steel mailbox
standing sentry by our stone wall,

the mail waiting to be pulled out
like an egg. Neighbors kept hens;
ours waited for mail. Father had taken

to country ways, the gentleman
farmer with his one vacant field,
mown every year on Labor Day.

Who was he then, ten years home
from a war on the U.S.S.
Something-or-Other? Why not hole up

far from the head office
in a fishing village where every farm
had been seeded with arrowheads,

home to some Tripp or Sowle
whose father’s father’s father’s father
lay in his grave

beside his father’s father’s father?
The town’s two-room schoolhouse
had a witch for a principal,

a kindly witch; and one of the Sowles
swept it out every afternoon,
lining up oak desks as if with a ruler.

I was too young for a letter.
I watched the red cock’s tail
with the patience of a hawk.