Appetite

Detour

92 Detour Chartres’ blue light plies along the stained glass, the acanthus capitals unrolling inner cool leaves of stone. A colorful beehive of pigmented cells casts out the figure of a Saint. Here, processions and whispered evangelical sagas resonated the dark vault, the pilgrims’ hands clutched scurvy staves. Their burlap crusted with road dust, their eyes caked with last night’s fidgety sleep on hay sheaves in a moon-slit barn, —all silent now and bewildered. For a kid of six the checkered maze of slabs was no more than hopscotch from earth to heaven, the high windows so grey from outside, eternal blue they let through among cool shouts dying in vesper’s bells. ...