The Dolorous Stroke

It's tricky, maneuvering the walker down to the water's edge,
but he manages, dodging dented, exiled appliances
and car parts sticking out of the sod like prehistoric bones.
He plops himself, creaking, into the skiff and folds  
the aluminum legs, leaving the collapsed contraption 
to wait for him, a faithful hound on the dock.
The air is fuzzy with sweat and cicadas. The cypress trails
its moss tresses into the brackish muck. 
The ragged bark hide of a gator floats on a carpet of green crud.  
He rows out to the middle of the lake,
his arms grown strong to compensate for his nearly useless legs.
His wrist pops as hie flicks his line, sending the rooster tail whizzing 
out over the water to land with a satisfying plunk.
He listens to the peeping of the frogs and the distant wheezing
of gnatcatchers and nuthatches. From time to time he squirts brown juice
with a ping into a metal can at his feet. 
Sometimes he cups a hand to one enormous furry ear,
thinking he hears Goodwills chewing the gravel. But there's never anyone there.
He's patient though, just as he is with the fish, even though he's only ever
caught one and that was many, many years ago.  
One eyelid droops, curtaining a smoky pearl. 
Yesterday he found a bittern, wings stretched as if crucified,
swarming with ants in the bottom of a rusty cistern. 
He spits. Plink. Runs knuckles through his frizzled hair.
The crinkled crepe of his face sags as if coming unglued.
Globules of saliva quiver on the tips of his whiskers. 
When the sun dips low behind the trees he rows home,
careful to take the can with him, 
nestled next to the bait in his swinging bucket 
as he makes his plodding way up the slope.
The trailer is furry with kudzu. He sits on a folding lawn chair,
unfazed by the clouds of mosquitoes, stuffing another wad of Skoal
into his cheek. He toes the can, careful not to spill it.
He smiles grimly, idly wondering, as he rarely does, 
how it was ever assumed that the grail should be a goblet.
How arrogant, to think that one could drink from the same cup
as their Lord. No, the sacred relic is a spittoon, 
the very same that caught
the Lord's holy spittle as He hung 
on that creaking limb, drooling
and dripping blood. What an honor it is, to be permitted to mix
one's own spit with His, in this very chalice!
He hocks again. A shotgun blast echoes from far across the marshes.  
Over the years he's grown sloth-like with patience,
though some nights he twitches with restlessness,
anxious for that day when a man, pure of heart and rich in spirit,
will drive up, parking in the weeds beside the double-wide,
and ask the question that will heal him
so that he can rest at last, 
wade into that swamp 
and stretch out his hands 
and catch that final fish.