after Jacobus Capone’s Dark Learning



How did he end up here? Would he want us

near to him — sharp ragged jaw and sculpted

ribs? Where else does he want to be? High with

solitude, black against a vacant sky,

I watch him hold a fire in his fist.

It fades — he shifts his eyes away from mine,

peers into a pool that must be ice; he

looks alive to me. But there, behind the

hard façade, the anguish of a dying

man demands our frigid minds to thaw — then

let the water settle. Still he stands. A

quiet beacon, smaller than the world, carves

a path over the mountain down toward

him where he prays, where I can’t see his face.