the young reader

What do I know about the irony 
of questions? The young self asked 
a long time ago.  What did you ask 

after reading the book?  He threw
the large questions at the sky
brightening in its blurry night

a kind of descending darkness
at the edges of soul.  Crime,
the phenomenon and the ontology

of it:  can one tiny be
wiped out by thousands 
of good deeds?

               But I was very very young, barely
into the hale storm of teens.
And in the quiet of clutching

a book and all the senses 
of life in it, saw the spectre 
within.