Midnight

Sam was meditating. Tipped back in a chair made of river alder and willow, he leaned against the log wall of his cabin. His shoeless feet were swathed in wrinkled socks of the kind that come to a point at the toe where a tuft of thread keeps the cotton yarn from unraveling. Sam’s blue shirt was faded from too many washings in the creek below the cabin. The only unfaded portions of the shirt were hidden by his wide, yellow suspenders.