Glenn G. Coats

The Pale of Late Summer

I have not seen Dave in twenty years. He is leaning on a cane behind the storm door when I pull into the drive. His still thick hair now ghostly white.

Dave leads me into a cluttered room with piles of music books, guitar cases, a dusty piano. A fan wobbles and hums. We pull two chairs together. “I can’t remember you ever being here,” he says. “You will have to remember for me.”

I remind him of the coffee shop in Bryn Mawr; how he took me to my first concert. “Yes,” Dave says. “Jerry Jeff Walker. Was that in 1969?” We talk about a blues guitar player that we caught at a refurbished mill. “Didn’t he have holes in his shirt?” Dave asks.

The afternoon passes and we take our guitars from their cases. At first, Dave recalls bits and pieces, a verse or two, a bass run. The beginning of one song, the end of another. “These strings are three years old,” he says. “I don’t think I can change them anymore.”

I teach him a tune about a fisherman. He closes his eyes and harmonizes along. Just as I am about to put my guitar away, Dave suddenly begins a song. His fingers move up and down the frets; he knows all the words to “Down By the Henry Moore.”

scent of wood smoke
light somewhere
over the hill

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About the Author

Glenn G. Coats lives with his wife, Joani, in Carolina Shores, North Carolina. His books include two Snapshot Press collections of haibun, A Synonym for Gone (2021) and Degrees of Acquaintance (2019); Furrows of Snow (Turtle Light Press, 2019), an honorable mention winner in the Haiku Society of America’s 2020 Merit Book Awards; and Another Lost Boat (Pineola Publishing, 2022).