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We aim the rental car into the parking lot
and stop under a weathered wooden sign that reads
"Groceries."
The blacktop stretches out, sticky from the Low-country sun.
Palmetto trees shake their heads in search of a breeze.
I squint at the old man sitting on the curb.
The steam from the blacktop dances around
his white hair.
The blue stripes on his shirt
fade in and out of my vision.
He raises a hand
as if saluting,
fingernails white against dark flesh like moons against a July sky.
Since the early days he has sat and waited and watched.
He watched the Choctaw hunt among the cypress trees.
He watched Beauregard's guns shell the fort in the harbor.
He sits and waits,
and he watches the great herons fly away
and the turtles sun themselves in the channels.
I stop for a moment
and wave back at a dozen centuries
and walk inside,
hearing only the hum of the air conditioner.
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