Wanting a Child

Jay Deshpande

Here in California, we can drive through any landscape, field, flower, forest, all in reach,

at sunset, affording not to notice the exhaust left in our stead. A daytrip takes us to the edge

of the continent, leaning out over some precipice, looking back. We are home by dinner, the house

soft colour, where our bodies move through dark’s thin language and something calls, urgently, from after.

Some days I don’t know if it’s fair of me, built as I am, a man, unable to carry every inch of an idea

into the future. In Gubbio, each spring brings the same pageant. Up hills of the medieval town,

up streets obscured by screaming crowds, three teams of men in bright blouses tumble upward with their tribute.

Up switchbacks, up stone roads smoothed by centuries’ tradition. In the middle of May they come this way, to carry

the wooden paraphrase of candles on their sweating, rainbowed shoulders. Each four meters tall, an emblem

of a patron saint. The same one wins each year. All Umbria comes to watch this alias of a race.

But the exertions are real: the men intent, although they know what little their ardour comes to. They pass

the title on through blood. Each time, the cheers subside when they touch the basilica. They set

the good things down. What honour it must be to carry something so beyond you up into

the sky, up toward the face of god. What work your faith must take. What flagrancy.