Sicily, 1992
Etna’s lava shone against the gloom,
putting near lightning to shame.
I caught a new scent that was somehow reminiscent
of my uncle’s Guernsey barn.
Maybe, I thought, I’m the one it comes from.
Everybody’s tainted.
Humility’s never a failing. I looked to the mountain.
I don’t mean to hide
a thing from anyone. But hard as I try,
some secrets can’t be divulged,
not accurately; they’re inarticulable.
I didn’t have a lot
of cruelties to atone for. Or I didn’t think so.
Yet something had launched these thoughts:
maybe the lizard basking on a limestone post
that morning, its pipping throat
the very emblem of innocence– and exposure.
Don’t ask me why in that moment
I inexplicably felt on the verge of weeping.
Then I noticed a great brown kite
that, while it secreted its merciless, gruesome talons,
kept up a graceful, seemingly languid wheeling.
