Pool_1

At home, there are smells. Inside, kitchen scents float in the early morning and the early evening. Outside, you get used to the nearness of chickens. Horses... down wind of horses you dream of riding, almost flying, no really flying - aback Pegasus - with your naked muscularity in rhythm with the beast, long hair horizontal in the wind, leaving trails of heat, flames. Such are dreams in quietude, perhaps at the end of a fishing pole. Home is rich in everything. Everything gone. Now - home is changed. "What's the matter? What's wrong?" her response to his startle, bolt upright in bed. "Hear it?" holding up a menacing portent finger. She'd seen him do this so many times, so many years now, so many demons in the night for so long. It was that unmistakable silence which snuffs out the innocent night clatter. He was getting up to get his rifle, instinct purely, with a low but pressured whisper, "Whatever you do, don't move!" It was the silence. Silence a prelude to evil. Who will cry out next? This is what home in the present has become, a past forever tattooed on the psyche. But back then? God! Home had been comforting, if only to be there. The landscape would be chattering with assurances. This place was not home. On this night of deadly quiet, men with black smeared faces were folding their bodies into shadows rooted to trees. Keep to the shadows! Each man knew the drill. It was so practiced. So many acquaintances lost to the light in the night sky. Io was rising, spitefully bright. Killer temptress moon, she was, willfully pointing out men to die. Only their pain would break the silence. From the direction of nowhere or everywhere in the tree tops, a shot rang out. A groaned reply was brief. So too, an urgent "He's hit! God! His head,.." followed by the muffled weeping of men, men in the wombs of shadow, embryonic men avoiding moonlight.