The Pass

When spring had come and the snow had melted from the pass,

I’d often trek down the mountainside,

Sit at my perch under an old, leprous tree,

Watch the wayfarers and trade caravans

Patter and rattle and chatter along the road between rocks.

 

Sometimes someone would see me

And want to come up and talk.

Grandma used to pack

Enough bread and apricot jam for a party.

I’d offer them some and listen to stories

Of west and east, of pirates and politics and court intrigues,

Of war and death and love,

Of more than what a nine-year-old should hear.

 

I heard those things

And when they told me no stories

I made some up.

    

Once a man in a raggedy cloak with a fire in his eye

Clambered up the slope

And wanted no bread. 

Instead he sat there with me watching the road.

When he dusted himself off after a spell of rest,

Waved away my questions and left,

I made something up about him.

 

 A curse had been put on him.

He’d had this desire to sing before a lot of people,

But his voice was no good.

The curse was the desire.

He’d mucked about for years, wasted youth and inheritance,

Even lost the love of his life,

For that unattainable.

Did he listen, did he finally give it all up?

No, the fool went on strike.

Silently, without so much as a peep,

He went from place to place,

Eyes wide open to the wide world,

Mutely thinking and thinking, strategizing

On a map of dust.

 

He’d had enough, but that beat horse

Continued to rise and silently take his lot,

Hoping and watching for another step up,

For that impossible crack in the straps.

 

 

I didn’t know why,

But I hated him, wanted nothing more than

To be among the crowd that’d hurl insults at him.

I threw my bread onto the road that afternoon.

After swimming in the stream, though, I came back,

Ate some of it.

I didn’t care that there was dirt in it.

I wanted it for myself. 

Reviews

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~~ many years ago... (during the time of dinosaurs)... a girl was born in a not-so-remote military base... ~~ when she was about one... her father was posted to a remote military base... it was hidden behind tea gardens and a forest... depending on which direction you approached it from... ~~ hyenas laughed at night when she went to bed... and during the day her favourite activity was standing near the barbed wire fence of the runway... to watch migs land and take off... along with other children (of course)... ~~ she never played with dolls and chose to make little objects fly instead... (like the migs she loved)... ~~ by the time her mind grew into the mind of an adult and that happened much after she technically turned into an adult... she'd faced so many catastrophes that she lost faith in God... and preferred the idea of evolution... and as she was battling the symptoms of PTSD... she decided to crush a cult... everyone thought she couldn't do it and that she was wasting her time... and she thought so too... when she looked at herself from the outside... but she just wouldn't stop trying... because she wanted justice... and she knew that no one except her could possibly get it for her... that thought was a curse... except that she didn't know what a curse was and so she couldn't recognize it...