For Jason and Ingrid on the Pilgrimage Road to Santiago de Compostela

Mack Hall

An Old Man Takes His Evening Walk

For Young Jason and Inky on Their Morning Journey

An old man weary-wends his evening walk
Along a wood-walled way, soft-shadow shaded:
Our planet’s little star now makes report,
Passing the watch to mysteries-haunted dusk;
The spoors of animals, like chalk upon
A classroom board, the sums of life drawn out
In fear and pain, and soon to be erased,
Detail in mud the curious walks-about
Of deer and possum, dog and squirrel and snake,
And an armadillo’s sudden-wheeled death.

From Grendel’s darkening woods the heavy air,
Incensed by ghosts, patrols the twilit mists
In search of day-lingering happiness
To drag down, down into the rising chill
Of long-dead summer grasses sighing for
The hopes of a longer-dead spring. The moon,
Dry ages cold, rises above the trees
As an ice-dead witness to the decay
Of stubborn dreams caught out in the open,
Too far through the fog from the lamp-lit door.

Perhaps this night is a dreamed pilgrimage,
To Santiago, perhaps, or to Rome,
Or maybe to far Constantinople
Dreaming under the Bosphorean sun,
Notre Dame de LaSalette, Canterbury,
Or happy mysteries in some sunlit field,
Duct-tape-repaired sneakers slapping the dust
Happily, eagerly, laughingly as
The golden domes of our ancient young Faith
Rise beyond the dawn, where they always were.

May your nights and the road slip lovingly
Across your souls like Our Lady’s soft prayers,
And may you come at last to where you are.