Descent from Heaven

A scab-faced guy

on a motorcycle

stops dead beside me

and turns off the key,

his split, swollen lips, the steady

lost stare say maybe this time

it's it –

this here

this now

beside this stupa.

Sometimes it happens

this way.

So close we are I can smell

the smoke of dung fires

and cigarettes, the thick stink

of one, then the other.

His right hand still on the throttle

is thick knuckled and bruised from battles,

and I think of Agamemnon arriving

at what he thinks of as home –

maybe it was his brother

or the wife that set the sails,

but it was all so long ago

he's not quite sure anymore.

So on this windless afternoon

beside the mud-walled temple

he decides it's not worth telling

or staying any longer

and turns finally the key, kicking

the cycle into life,

and for a reason or not

he spares me.

© 2007, Jim Gourley