In the distance, a cloud we all agree
Looks like a cosmic duck.
A white cross and a billowing flag of the nation
Alongside grazing black cows on a grassy hill.

In the courtyard, roses and bougainvillea.
White flowers whose name I do not know.
A sign:
"Look. Smell. Do not cut."

A sign on the church door:
"Funeral in progress."
The sound of applause breaks like polite waves.
A life is being recounted, retold, reduced.

Behind glass, the refectory, scene of silent sacral dinners past.
Behind glass, vestments from China, Russia, Venice.
Behind glass, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak on the famed spiral poster.
Behind glass, Hitchcock’s life mask in gold.

I look for the bell tower, scene of the vertiginous final shot.
It’s not here.
It was demolished years before the film was made.
I have sought the fact behind the fiction and found that the fact was fiction.

Bread, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers.
We savor rainbow sandwiches by the curb.
Fresh, crisp, juicy, tangy, sharp.
Real.

I think of the varieties of stories we tell ourselves.