Banff: Running Away

I was young enough to believe that when moments felt significant they probably were. I saw sacraments everywhere

                                              so knee deep in snow
                                              behind the picnic shelter
                                              where I went to take a leak
                                              I looked up
                                              at mountains only
                                              only partially cloud shrouded

and was sure that this must mean something. But metaphor wasn’t imminent, or it was hiding just past the edge of my loneliness.

Aegina: After School

She was just home from school, and we had paid the guard, her father, twenty-five drachma for admission. We had taken a boat out from Piraeus that morning, then caught a bus up the mountain to the Temple of Aphaia, a local goddess lost in forest or sea. We came for the pines and view and wind through the double colonnade. But we sat in the shade

                                                to watch
                                                            the black-haired child
                                                kicking stones
                                                            across the temple yard.