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

In the courtyard, running children in uniforms.
Roses and bougainvillea. White flowers whose name I do not know.
A sign says, "Look. Smell. Do not cut."

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

Behind glass, the refectory, scene of silent sacral dinners past.
Behind glass, a calligraphed book of hymns.
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 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, juicy, messy, filling, fleeting, real.

The varieties of stories we tell ourselves.