Facing Stone

I.

The council van came today for the first time since March, which around here counts as an event, the way a comet counts. The man got out, looked at the wall, and wrote something down that I would give a great deal to read.

I like to imagine it is poetry. It is probably a budget code.

II.

He told me, unprompted, that the facing stone has maybe eight winters left in it, ten if we're kind to it, which struck me as a strange thing to say about a wall, being kind to it, as though the wall might notice and hold itself together out of gratitude.

I did not say this to him. I said, right, thanks, and he said, that's just how it goes with these old walls, and got back in the van, satisfied, having done the one thing his job actually asks of him, which is to watch something fail slowly and say so out loud.

III.

The heron was not there for any of this. The heron has never once cared about the facing stone. I stood where he'd stood and looked at the same eight winters and thought, not for the first time, that this is the whole of what I do down here: I watch a man watch a wall and I call it an afternoon, and somehow it is, and I will be back next spring to see what the van says then.