Inventory

All those angry months leaving the self until the jungle cover opened onto a path winding, like a narrow Incan trail, into the hills.

All those years of forgiveness, mustard blossoms in the field behind his first home. All the fields. All the homes.

Every knuckle broken, every eye bruised, every rasping breath queuing to make the rosary that would circle back to him.

North to south to north, all the swallows traveling one continent to the next, slaves of spring, waving their s-patterns in the air at each return.

Every horse in a yellow field. Every first home.

All those years like an ancient craftsman pounding the things around him into the shape of beads. He might have resembled a station of the cross. The scene of an accident. The emptiness where someone had just stood or something had just happened before it moved on. Every bead an artery.

Every bead an artery. Every artery a star. Every star climbing behind the rock face just beyond the mountain ruin. Every star leaving the line of its passing behind, thread of a veil, lit strand of a rope, the sky road that would lead him to the edge, but no further, of dark space without him.