This air is the air of an oven,
it is so deathly hot.
For days the sun has been crisping the microbes.
A boy has disappeared from the village.
2AM and the foothills of the Pyrénées
lit with light flashes between the dark spaces of trees,
foliage on foliage.
Sparks of light glitter the mountain sides.
Up here- mountains before us, village below us-
it’s like an ant farm, lines of lights
following the twists and turns between
row after row of houses
scaling slowly into the mountains
for the third consecutive night.
II.
The day it happened,
we’d walked into the foothills,