Down in the Town

Down in the town there are twenty people eating and twenty-one people pooping. There’s a guy blowing his nose and there’s a couple making babies. Two-hundred people are watching TV – along with fifteen cats sitting on laps – and one man is fixing his motorcycle.

There’s one man down there who’s very comfortable – more comfortable than he should be. He’s lying down in a bit of an awkward position, but he doesn’t mind that. He’s lying in a paddock where he and some of the neighbours keep their goats. He went there to fetch a bale of hay and spread it around for the animals to eat. It’s been a dry season and there isn’t much grass, but there’s still enough grass to feel good when lying down in it.

Aah, the sun is shining and the birds are singing. The man is thinking about all the things that have happened in his life. He blamed his mother for a lot of his problems, but he’s thinking that they were really his own fault. And they weren’t such big problems anyway. He wishes he could say sorry.

The man’s father passed away before they ever got to know each other. The father died at eighty years of age. The son was sixty at the time. He wonders how sixty years could have passed without him ever asking the questions he’d always wanted to know the answers to.

A goat comes and starts to prod the man with its nose. The man would move, but he is stuck. The shed that held the hay has fallen and is pinning him to the ground. The sheet metal roof has gravely injured him. But, he is comfortable in the sunshine, thinking about his life.

Down in the town an man paints a brick wall, four people are pruning roses, five old ladies are dancing to an old song they remember from their youth, and a contented man who was feeding the goats of the neighbourhood has just passed away.

T