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Show CHRYSALIS PAGE 129 water. They stalk precious stones, and iron nails, and beetles in the muddy yard. They are their father's sons. Maybe this is The Day They Will Find A Fossil! -a shark's tooth, a trilobite, or maybe an Indian arrowhead. They hide in the shadows and in wet dark places around the black trunks of trees, in the sharp angles of walls, under the neighbor's pruned hedges, the wild light on them silvering reluctantly as the sun tries to shine. Wonder of all wonders, a rainbow! Remy lifts a finger to test the direction of the wind, as Balboa on the mountain above the Pacific must have tested the world-shaking wind upon his finger. Ah, well. Remy hides his stiff fingers inside the warmer sleeves of his coat. The wind is cold. They play until time and chattering teeth drive them inside. Sunday - where are the churchbells? Our church has no bell tower. Churches now are large places of polished pews, thick glass doors and bricks. No bells. They used to be homey, dusty places of peeling wood and white-steepled bells that rang out Sundays, or marriages, or funerals, and they kept their dead beside them close in little churchyard cemeteries. I suppose their numbers grew too large. The multitudenous dead kept coming on, like the sad march of the Cheyenne to reservations. The dead have all been exiled to reservations of their own called Graceland, and Elysian Gardens, and Mount Olivet. |