ALL RESPONSES |
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for View from the castle. Lake of Garda, Italy
I squandered sunlit days
on lago di Garda, drinking
bottles of Bardolino,
breathing alpine breeze
over cool glacial water.
A young man's reflection,
merged with peaks, asked why
Italian soldiers drank wine with lunch
while the world's sober protectors
washed down linguine with water.
Later, American stamens
would wilt at midnight
against riposo-rested
dark-haired flowers,
but learned much by watching
Carabinieri drink espresso
in one, swift swallow. |
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Campo II: The Tower
is set in stone, designed by an architect whose
imagination shared solidity with other minds
while the eyes were not looking.
No wind can faze the tower’s structure.
In evening its arch becomes theatre
waiting for a character to appear.
The stars are light as footsteps ringing hollow,
a pigeon's wings sudden flapping.
Sometimes, with the past in attendance,
you fall in love with a place like a soul mate,
but this dark brooding is not such a place.
It invites no one. No begger squats at its entrance.
No shoppers cluster. No kid rides by on a bike.
Even the photographer’s shadow doesn’t venture in
to its land of cold sweat. Eons from now, as ruins,
as a pile of rocks, the tower will lose its only saving grace,
the light waiting just outside its arch, light as courage,
guiding you to the path you must take. And your escape.
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Je tu dire that here exist a Thee and Me. (I tell you)
I tell you there's a stronghold, because
there is or was, and daydreams do insist.
Long ago, its walls rose up by hand
from rubble strewn in vacant lots,
to raise a fail-safe fortress on the street.
Through trebuchets, incendiaries, artillery,
ordinary boys took Firsts at the Sorbonne.
Your mother was from Kryon. Oui, je sais. . . (Yes, I know)
She was the Queen; just like Madame Proust.
I know---she built your bed in dappled glades,
from rhubarb leaves the size of elephant ears.
You felt the wild well-being thickness
of the silver-backed papa who watched you,
curbed his urge to eat you. Stared his
elemental rage through the equidistant
orange grapefruit lanterns of Rousseau.
Plus encore, mon petit; I'll tell you that one. (Over again, my little one) |
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from a photograph by Maria Campo
The Great Door
So what, so you can see the sky.
Big deal. It is not heaven.
Discard the metaphors of pearly gates
And St. Peter as a doorkeep.
In fact, discard St. Peter.
Now, look at those steps again.
Imagine each brick being laid.
Imagine the hod and the labor.
Could you do it? No! Why?
Because you have food tonight
And a home to go to, to sleep.
Those who laid those bricks and
Carried that hod did not. But,
Neither could they discard St. Peter.
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Red wine and
raisins
olives
and the world
smelling
of sunset
***
I've never been anywhere except on this continent. I grew up in Montreal, but I once lived in the suite below an old woman who wore house dresses and curlers all day and made the best pizza I have ever tasted. She would cook too much almost every day, and rap on our door with a dish of something three, sometimes four times a week.
Generosity was not something I was familiar with. Everything I knew was mean, scraped up, handed down, cheap. I was the daughter of a divorced woman in French Catholic Quebec. (Tsk!) And yes, it would become a common thing, to be the child of a single parent family, but it wasn't in my neighbourhood.
The woman who lived upstairs from us didn't ask about our circumstances. She could speak only a very little bit of English. She said "Welcome! Welcome! Eat!" when she delivered her leftovers to our door, and not much else.
Some summer evenings, I'd find her on our shared front porch, sitting in one of those aluminum folding lawn chairs, eating raisins. In her left hand, she'd hold a tumbler of wine - never a proper glass - and in her right, a fistful of raisins. I would sit beside her, and we'd watch the sun set together without a word passing between us. She'd hand me a few raisins and I'd eat silently, being careful not to chew with my mouth open, and I would, in those few moments, know a kind of peace.
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For Early mist. La nebbia del mattino
I walk early on a shadowy lane
where rain puddles have grown
pollinated by pregnant clouds.
This morning humidity has formed
into the skin of air
and milkweed of lost dreams.
The fog rises silent,
grey hovering veiled breath
of haunted souls.
Here, through atmosphere of doom,
otherworldly fly with invisible wings
as sky-mouth opens wide
to swallow the solid earth.
I am here alone with the magic
of smoke and disappearance,
crossed over into the land of erasure
where the dead speak of empty sorrow.
In heaven, they tell me,
there is no word for goodbye.
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for: The great door, Campo II
I walked through the doorway
of this apartment building
never asking why, never asking when,
I would one day stop
and think of all the years gone by
(while in my memories)
I’m holding my mother’s hand,
a lover’s hand,
my child’s hand.
I walked through this doorway
without hesitation,
knowing I belonged to its wood frame and door
as the shiny brass handle,
somehow,
belonged to me.
At times sticky from humidity
the wood showed signs of time
and restlessness of keys
used to poke it or scratch hearts into it.
"Pull, insert key, hold, turn, push open."
Now that I am left outside
of the place I once called home
I understand the value of all that,
unaware, I had collected in my heart;
the days and years I'd taken for granted.
Standing in front of its closed doors,
I realize I don't hold the key
anymore.
(While in my memories)
I still cross through
holding my mother's hand,
a lover's hand,
my child's hand.
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It is not the first 100 steps or so
that are difficult
but only when you have lost your breath
and a will to exist in uniform.
Freedom is at stake, desire
intimacies are a secret
grey as the ashes filling the pit
of last night's bon fire.
A seamless visage of temples knocked down
surround those enslaved by emotion
flogged
they retreat as you march onward
penance, penance: it is a word whispered
at the 1000th step
with rhythm it is softly repeated
bolstering you forward past the writing
in the cracks on the walls.
“Was I forgiven for my transgressions?”
You can hardly remember now,
sleep is a need so great your eyelids
act like a fortress
against future smiles and fondness
sleep cannot stop the thoughts
of what went wrong
as you hope for a satisfactory end
to a journey that has been both long
and painful.
Knowledge forces you to stand alone
beneath the sky.
The oxygen has thinned out here at the top.
You can hear something like the waves of an ocean
and yet you see nothing but clouds drifting
at your finger tips,
forming elephants and giant clams -
castles, dark forests and caves
where warriors rest.
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Only on this earth, our bodies
entwined in a silence heavy
with years of knowing as if we were
the sacred dark of a cathedral,
the one we visited in Wells last spring.
Shadowed by Stonehenge,
adjacent to Avesbury,
not far from Glastonbury Tor,
winter green grass mown,
scattering of daffodils.
Beneath the famous scissored arch
echoes drown the voice of the rector
so many lives touched that stone:
Pict, Celt, Saxon, Norman.
On this undulating earth, the endless
migration of people, the mingling
of blood and language and stone.
On this harrowed earth our bodies
our illuminated book of hours
with labor and feasts,
wine and bread on the table,
offerings left on altar slabs.
Hands empty and full – our breath
mingled and alive, naming our vanishing
the way cathedrals hold space and fill it,
the hymn beginning and ending in our flesh.
And stones move silently across the world,
hurled into a ship’s weightless hold,
folded into a glacier’s melting mound,
or quick pocketed by tourists, their
children reaching for something
shiny and round.
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as deep July brews
dried flowers wilt
against stone
imperfect
is my only thought
mother is here, behind
her door
i read Dylan Thomas
to her in a small voice,
wondering where she really went
if i were a poet, i might write
she is only away
there are no stars
tonight, sky almost flawed
like being here
reading poetry to an audience,
supporting faith |
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The frame is old, its handle creaks at the turn,
its swing lingers, a memory washing in with the tide.
Its glass reveals places out there
Out There sees the places in here.
Seventy some years this door has stood-
a mouth, an open eye
spitting people out, watching them enter in,
a flapping tongue between walls of wood
faithfully guarding the sacred.
Holding, releasing, keeping
the stories within, the footsteps of time.
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it was the way that he wanted to go
spread out like an eagle's breath
on a wind from on top a lovers’ keep
I took him there
thirty-five years took him there
the steps of cancer brought him there
into an old ice cream pail
I shoveled his ashes
it all seemed so backwards
and as I walked up every stair
through arches and regalia, he was there
a poem of a love affair, us two
remembering even though the bones
were ground down into dust—fear leached out—
no lies in these ashes
and he held my hand out to the wind
said, Let us go, friend, lover, teacher,
when you decide. my heart and eyes
do not want this yesterday
to simply blow away
but it must.
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Stones heaped like this
do not speak to me of past glories.
What my heart hears
is the the slow dripping of blood
and the unlistened to moans
of those whose lives were lost
fulfilling the towering dreams
of the powerful.
Perhaps God forbears towers
to remind us of vainglorious pursuits.
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Patriarch.
He ruled the family
with the razor strap hanging by the back door,
with the cross tatooed on his left hand
that moved up and down and every which way
in response to angry gestures.
It was the culture
which said fathers were to be obeyed, regardless.
It was the mother, his wife,
who suffered her life thinking his word was law
and passed the woes of passivity on to the children.
It was the times
which said family and father were of ultimate importance,
to be listened to and obeyed at any cost.
Patriarch.
He was the story of the earth,
the myth that said strength and thrust
make the world go round,
the myth that said the world grew out of woman crushed,
and that every family needed
a razor strap by the back door. |
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I see a light at the top of the stairs.
It widens. As I move slowly forward,
My lungs begin to fill with air.
Around me, faces, covered with masks,
Speak a familiar language.
For the first time, I feel pain, and cry.
For the first time, I leave love behind.
So, this is life.
Looking to rest in someone’s arms.
Looking for a warm hole to crawl in.
Finding it, closing one’s eyes,
Sleeping, dreaming, loving.
To be pushed out again, and again.
This is life, and it will never end.
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for La Passeggiata: The Walk
Where does the road lead
And where are your steps taking you
While the old walls of town
Watch you walk by?
This little town seems to not age
Even if the wrinkled facades
Of the building you pass tell otherwise.
They little know of who you are,
The hand you hold,
The words you speak
Which are the same as mine
But are not from here.
Does the sun of this summer day
Understand what this all means to me?
I am watching you walk ahead of me
Still within reach but on a different time-track.
This is an image filled with promises
And time passing by.
A story has been told through your steps
In this lazy and warm afternoon.
You see the same things I see
But do you feel them as my heart does?
Turn around; let me see your eyes,
Tell me please If this walk
Feels like home to your heart.
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for Flight without Limits
Even robin’s egg tender
the pelicans awkwardness and grace,
their dives blue coruscations
glide low, brown wings, blue canvas
Pelicans, all command and grace
glide in low, not blue, filemot
after landing, flap their wings
the snap of flags in wind
Fra Angelico, Della Robia
wedgewood, flax, across
centuries the plodding sound
of soft lazuli slippers
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to: fligt without limits
Above my father's ship
mid-ocean
sometimes
a lonely seagull
will keep station
just behind and
a bit to the left
of the foremast
for hours on end
without moving its wings.
Sometimes
I have almost wished
to be able
to pass through this world
this life
in that beautifully serene fashion.
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i shouldn’t have to describe this,
even when
eighteen year old girls rest
cigarettes in pursed lips,
posing,
pretending
the woman in them,
spontaneously igniting
in September
there are no words in the dictionary
to describe these God created geniuses
of hair and legs
they chuckle,
disappearing around each corner
i would rather eat my words
and coat my tongue in black,
not meaning, of course,
to sound anymore tortured
than i already am |
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(by Britt Fleming and Mario Campo)
for The Golden Alps
We'll lose our fears
in Alpine dreams.
We'll ripen, lonely
on the hills of Alba.
In a valley reserved for us
with no future to escape to.
Can we save each other for later?
Let's fly to Piemonte. |
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