Aleppo Leaves

Cyrrhus (Nabi Houri)

The wreck of rocks overlooks plowed earth, red with recent rain, reveals a jagged ring dramatic as the stage below overgrown with dry thistle and young grass, the raked rows of seats expectant, the players stolid columns, headless, the capitals so many feet planted, the silent chorus of the dead memorialized by a tower tomb, its hexagonal sides narrow to a point capped with a button like a bird’s nest. Windows facing forward and back, six directions simultaneously as one might expect for death’s sentinel.