then it would collapse into darkness, shrinking to a
single point like some impossibly brilliant lightning bug.
He
smiled
to see me.
He had golden
hair and the most
beautiful smile I have
ever seen on a child’s face
and I was afraid of him-even
before he called out to me by name.
I pretended I didn’t hear him, pretended
he wasn’t there, that I didn’t see him, walked
right past him. He laughed to see me hurrying by.
The
farther
I went the
steeper it got.
There seemed to be
a light below, as if
somewhere beyond a ledge,
through the trees, there was
a great city, on the scale of Roma,
a bowl of lights like a bed of embers.
I could smell food cooking on the breeze.
if
it was
food-that
hungry-making
perfume of meat
charring over flame.
Voices
ahead of me:
a man speaking
wearily, perhaps
to himself, a long
and joyless discourse;
someone else laughing, bad
laughter, unhinged and angry.
A third man was asking questions.
“Is
a plum
sweeter after
it has been pushed
in the mouth of a virgin
to silence her as she is taken?
And who will claim the baby child
sleeping in the cradle made from the
rotten carcass of the lamb that laid with
the lion only to be eviscerated?” And so on.
At
the
next
turn in
the steps
they finally
came into sight.
They lined the stairs:
half a dozen men nailed on
to crosses of blackened pine.
I couldn’t go on and for a time
I couldn’t go back; it was the cats.
One of the men had a wound in his side,
a red seeping wound that made a puddle on
the stairs, and kittens lapped at it as if it
were cream and he was talking to them in his tired
voice, telling all the good kitties to drink their fill.
I
did
not go
close enough
to see his face.
At
last
I returned
the way I had
come on shaky legs.
The boy awaited me with
his collection of oddities.
“Why
not sit
and rest your
sore feet, Quirinus
Calvino?” he asked me.
And I sat down across from
him, not because I wanted to but
because that was where my legs gave out.
Neither of us spoke at first. He smiled across the blanket spread with his goods, and I pretended an interest in the stone wall that overhung the landing there. That light in the jar built and built until our shadows lunged
