Hedged In

They are under the hedge, the elderly, the silver whiskered. Threadbare possums, frail chipmunks. The feeble, squeezed into narrow parts of the day. Her apartment is hedged in. Her telephone is a blank land line. The television is deaf. A groundhog comes out to gaze at the sunset, some myopic sniffing, then shuffles back with that stout old man rolling gait of his. She forages in her living space, from a window she blinks at the moon, only yesterday it slipped from her purse. Her hands hang soft and blue. Pills pend under a bedroom lamp. The hedged in listen to the small, contained movements of their elder days. They will abide here knitting the hours together until the long forgetting.