HELEN BAILEY
____________________________________
Cobh to Providence
Secrets in your grave
I would unearth,
and you,
you would tell a story,
yes,
one I would remember.
Lies,
of Vikings
saints, rogues or monks.
Loves,
those left behind,
the child still birthed,
another birthed to madness,
the man who
widowed you in youth.
Words,
yours,
for this land, mine,
where roots are shallow.
[323]
Helen V.
Have I no photos without feeling
for the disordered memory
of pressing the leads to the flat line,
my heart speaking for yours
enough, so I sit with
the generations of women
in a ritual having no rules,
left to wonder--did we do well?
[324]
A Scene Revisited
I took my place in line,
no corded barriers to guide me,
choosing my fate
of multiple transactions preceding.
Mortgages, car payments,
Christmas Club withdrawals,
pennies to be bound,
statements reconciled.
Next to me, a man clutched his passbook
in prayerful pose,
eyes square upon the teller--
patience born of another era.
His dark suit at the elbows
reflected other wearings:
funerals of friends, a wife perhaps,
tedious days of penciled calculations.
Trousers that rippled on shoe tops
with each advance,
once--he then a taller man--
danced straight seamed
on polished floors.
At last with folded hands upon the counter,
and in courtly manner,
he faintly smiled, a "good day" followed
punctuated by a practiced gesture
that clicked his upper denture to its repose.
I marked the scene,
filed it among poignant memories.
But I was barely eighteen then,
and did not know
that to the body's small betrayals,
we can be reconciled.
[325]
Tourists
You a city, I a country apart
from all that was familiar
we did not seem strangers.
Nor later, as we for years
strung words across continents.
From mere glimpses
worlds imagined,
but we were mere tourists
in each other's life.
[326]
Faith Unspoken
A smile, fire,
too young to be an invitation
to one white etched on black
one too old not to understand
but for craven indifference.
Incense and Kyries
chants and whispers
while they in white etched on black
gather, comfort the conqueror
lest the vanquished
raise their fists like hosts.
[327]
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