The air is like clabber, the edge of everything deepens. He rides away from Trajan's troops, which he's led for a decade, from his wife and tall children, from his name, Placidus of Rome, which suggests a temper he's unsure he possesses. Ahead, the saplings fold into smooth skeins of surface. His horse breathes with the climb. We'll run forever, he thinks, and with this the scene darkens.
Persuasion falls like a freshet.
At last the saint returns to his life, flexing change within him like a bent souvenir. At home, just beyond the porch light's arc, fledglings warm the trees in indistinct bundles. The breedless dog races first up the steps. Where the man sways at the edge of dark air, the hour folds itself into a sweetness he follows lightly into a thought of his wife already curled in a city-state of sheets, her mouth extravagant with remonstrance, with welcome.