In the dark, dark Forest

 

Im dunklen, dunken Wald - In the dark, dark Forest 30 x 24 cm - Pastell

 

STARING AT AN ECLIPSE

Showing up on our back doorstep

unannounced, those proverbial excursionists, incognito

most of the time and always in a hurry to move on:

old Clyde was kind and compassionate and suffered

accordingly and your sister’s friend Eva preferred the

moral high ground, and Tommy Solo

was curious about everything and kept a secret notebook.

The espresso machine squirted and the cigarettes came out.

They couldn’t resist a good story.   

Once upon a miserable moment I walked, hobbled,

almost crawled one hundred plus miles in three days

from Poison Ivy, Virginia to Richmond, the state capitol,

its airport, seated on the tarmac with parachute

on and about 60 pounds of equipment—knife, tank killer,

semi-automatic rifle, garrote, brass knuckles, Mexican grass, and other

paraphernalia of the killing trade—strapped and taped to my body.

The trooper sitting next to me started to cry very slowly and quietly to himself:

 an eclipse from which no man could avert his eyes.