( I )
I wake up shouting, striking hard
at the rat chewing on my big toe.
It takes almost a minute
to realize I’ve been dreaming.
Not the first time the fright has been upon me
and not uncommon either to wear my slippers to bed.
( II )
1915, Aquileia, west from Trieste —
my great uncle Giuseppe only a baby,
his family in flight from the advancing Austrians.
And the priest refused admission to the church —
a desecration, he said,
to have them sheltering in the house of God,
and sent them to the stables.
But this was no nativity scene
in that humble parish just inland from the sea.
The straw was fetid and damp,
with a sweet smell that was anything but.
You could hear the squeaking, hissing, chattering
of the rats in the building’s darkened margins.
But it was other noises they woke to in the night —
chomping and grinding. Shooing the creatures away
from the crying baby
they gazed in horror on the scene —
his big toe bitten right off.
( III )
In the sand at Wasaga Beach, we marvel
at Uncle Joe with his four toes —
ask him over and over
to tell the story about the stable
and the rats, and how it felt,
the crunching on bone
as they made their meal.
And we all fall quiet when he comes to the part
about that rough wooden cross in the churchyard,
the family showing those Austrian soldiers the baby’s wounds,
telling them about the priest.
How the soldiers dragged him roughly from his church
and how his blood made blackened pools in the dirt —
one right under his feet,
the other two under his outstretched arms.
And them just leaving him hanging there,
screaming for the mercy of Christ.
Richard Brait is a corporate lawyer living in Toronto. He has degrees in engineering physics, and law, and (forty-one years later) his MFA in poetry from Bennington College.