For Maria De Bona Who Lies Dying at Ninety-One

It is many thousands of years ago and
A man carves a megalith facing the Atlantic storms,
Carves a spiral,
And down the channel he has chiseled
Flow first the souls of his ancestors,
Then the living follow, his brothers and sisters,
His wife and clan,
And last the unborn who are now just entering.
We all flow, he thinks, to the last
And tightest spiral, pouring into this great stone,
Our souls into the pores of the stone, together.

Hovering over the prairies of Nebraska,
Hovering in the blue dome over the plain
Curving away into oblivion,
We see the spiral chutes twisting toward the killing box,
And the lowing kine calmly plod between the narrow high walls,
Unable to look back or see ahead.
At the final moment they feel the soft support below their bellies,
A shelf raises their chin to the blue Nebraska sky,
And they never feel the bolt to the brain,
Or the current flashing from behind the ear to the spine.

Mother shrieks at phantoms only she can see,
And the terrors of ninety years emerge to coat her wrinkled face,
In each furrow is the ache of famine,
The grey-clad soldiers in steel helmets,
And those moments of reaching into a pocketbook to pay at the market,
The children at home needing clothes.
The contours of her toothless mouth curve inward,
Her soul swirls down the vortex,
Down the black hole of her mouth,
To we know not what.

Will she like that other Maria be borne on a sheet by angels,
Her body too sacred even for angels to touch?
Will an angel take her soul by the hand and rise heavenward?
Will her young husband assist at the resurrection of her youthful body,
And will he place her soft hand on his heart to show her,
Yes, it is really beating?

Her angel is her daughter,
Speaking soothing baby-talk to her child-mother,
Feeding pabulum and wiping her chin.
Her angels are her sons, old men themselves,
Keeping vigil in a chair and rising to caress her hair,
Or put a cold arm under the blanket.

Will she meet that unknown love of her life,
L’anema gemela
Drio le neole nà stela ciàra,
In the language of her childhood,
Meet that bright star hidden by clouds?



October 29th, 2006
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