At dawn I went down to the marketplace
To purchase some trout and a pint of oil
With a snuffed flame in my fractured lantern
Held up high to keep my head dry from rain
As if the skeleton of an old umbrella––
Along the way I met a man under
An overpass selling framed photographs
Of wild horses, crosses, and antique houses;
He told me that he had been hit on a run
And relearned his native tongue through scripture
Which he had once been forced to remember
Upon those hard, wooden pews of childhood.
I tossed a live ember into his tip jar,
And walked up to the picture of a door.

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