Vagrants and Loiterers

South Carolina, c.1950 You got that clean waistcoat, the bright white of a well-tailored shirt, you got those loose-as-sacks slacks and some spit-polished shoes, and you know, whether you are looking like money, or about to take a stroll, to tilt that hat like you own the world; yeah, smoke your pipe, roll your tobacco, and hold loose as authority, your muscles, lithe and hard; and every so often, when you feel the urge, you reach into the waist pocket and pull out that watch on its chain, then look in the sky and say Gonna be a cold one when it come, like God gave you that fancy clock to tell the future. These are the easy boys of the goodly South; waiting for what is out of frame to happen: the sheriff with his questions, the paddy wagon, the chain gang, the weight of the world. Waiting, with such delicate dignity, fickle as the seasonal sky.