Here we have a man on his front porch, sitting and watching the traffic, the sunset ochre in the haze of an Indian Summer afternoon. He holds a pair of clippers that belonged to his father. A beautiful day, warm enough to drive the sparrows to the birdbath in the morning and under the hedges by lunch. He drove into town and drank iced tea in the colonnade, wetting his fingers in the condensation on the glass, to turn the pages of the latest Time.

His father left him all his tools: channel-locks and hammers, socket sets, files and screwdrivers, power drills, tree saws, sewer snakes, leaf rakes and boxes of nails. Everything a man might need. Now he holds the shears, working them on the cooling air, as on the thinnest branches of his trees. And wonders how he came to own one pair of black shoes for everyday, and one black pair for Sunday. And somewhere in a closet are a pair for hiking, which he never does.

Time goes slowly in the afternoon, then suddenly the day is gone. It doesn’t linger at the door, with promises to visit soon or call about the holidays. You do not hear its tires wheezing down the driveway and pausing at the street. So when he puts the clippers away in the dim garage, and hangs his picking ladder on the wall beside his truck, the sun is gone.