Poetry

by. Patricia Dobler

MOTHER AND THE DIVER

The diver at Paestum, the slim body

entering a mirror of blue water,

poised, serene, while his friends

eat and flirt and philosophize …

The painting shows a happy death,

a cheery departure, this plunge of the soul

into the unknown, the soul that leaves

and still remains … lovely to think so,

to make it so on the walls of his tomb.

My daughter nurses her son

in the dark, so tired

she can barely hold him

and then she feels my mother,

her strength like a breeze, a cool hand

on the cheek, for mother knew

what it was to be downhearted.

Lisa knows she came to comfort and to see

her new great grandson … lovely to think so,

is it not.  With all my heart I’d make it so.

TONINO’S FINGERNAIL

His double life, who wouldn’t love it, you could be responsible,

a family man eating your Sunday pasta, but you could

still be operatic like the men at the funerals Tonino shows us –

the great masses of flowers the blunt-nosed hearses

the abstracted men in silk suits and all of them dangerous,

what will they do next?  For that matter

what will Tonino do next with his little fingernail,

manicured, long and curved?  Then Ignazio

and I lean over the wall of a villa, Vesuvius in the distance –

he’s a jumped-up scion of English shopkeepers,

lives here like a king – he tells me Naples is beautiful

but watch the inhabitants, their cunning is unbearable.  But

I like the city with its pickpockets at Mass and weird aquarium

(no colorful tropical fish, just the kind I’ll see on tonight’s dinner plate)

the dusty parks and teen-aged brides arranged on harbor rocks:

one throws her head back and lets her sleeves fly free –

then she’s embraced by her balding groom and arranged, arranged

again by bustling men who fuss over her, snapping pictures,

a baby-toting woman stands watching.  It’s life, friends.

All the 20^th century’s best ideas ended in disaster

but that’s irrelevant in Naples.  Are there babies?  And

how’s business?  Mille, mille, mille, says Tonino.

He’s talking about time, thousands of layers of occupiers,

and the cynical ancient poor, how they go on

and over and under your life, doubling, tripling.

BODY SECRET

Before they learned to render the body

the artists mastered draperies, so this Aphrodite

with quiet face and crimped hair

is covered neck to little foot.  Her toes

peek out and she extends a hand, the same hand

that you see holding the Christ Child

in countless later statues.  The hidden body

suggests a severe goddess yet there were those

who loved her – thousands of offerings

from centuries of supplicants were found

with her: terra cotta replicas of pomegranates,

babies in swaddling bands, sometimes

wombs or doves or sheaves of wheat, whatever her worshippers

feared or desired.  A powerful goddess, but

I’m not devoted to Aphrodite or Mary, and my mother loved

the lesser saints and their minor tasks:

Anthony the finder, Joseph the husband,

always a consort, always following paces behind.

Before Mother died she couldn’t pray any more,

she wanted God to take her and he would not. 

She was angry, and that night

I didn’t talk to God or Mary, I wanted my dead father.

“Daddy,” I said.  “You have always loved this woman,

now look at her.  Tell God.”  I had no votive offering,

and for sure Daddy is not one of the great ones,

but he heard me.  In the morning I went to her bed

and found the still body, the little foot stuck out of the sheet.