In the parking lot in front of the Shell
station
In the parking
lot in front of the Shell station,
a chair, a prie dieu
like the nuns
used.
Mahogany—worth
something
even
if you didn’t pray—and the chair
inviting hips
ampler than hers.
Made for whom?
You want what?
Incredulity.
His.
They needed a
table,
a bed.
But the chair
laddering hope
to home
curved slats
bridging then to then—
across now—
looming tall for
daughters unborn
to scramble to
its lap
trace the curled
top, a Napoleon hat,
framing then to
then
across now—
She’s at art
school, the eldest.
Top prize for
the life-size Picasso-ish horse,
noble slant to
bronze head.
I was thinking of the chair.
Thief
The summer I
came back East
friends lent
their fine old house—
A spider to
the pomegranate,
lush window
seats, a purple
couch. My
friends had lived in Jeddah,
good jewels
and spices.
Above the
fireplace, his ancestors eyed
each other;
hers painted the 18th-century
botanicals. I
wanted things
I’d never
thought about—sea glass,
an idle table.
Considering
the poet’s library
I couldn’t
write. I fed the birds,
the
squirrels—myself.
At night I was
afraid
of one brown
bat.
The day I left
I went into the kitchen,
took her
cutting board
shaped like a pig.
In
the Spanish Chapel
On the ceiling the ocean tips a boat too small to hold eleven men.
Some stare into the sea, some stand as I stand seasick
looking up at them.
Under the swollen mast one covers his face, another could be Peter
the one who makes me want to shout
Sit
down!
Who made this fresco understands the dread that sleeps in water,
the worry of the swells.
I find his name and learn my apprehension
missed the miracle—
Peter
kneeling in the sea
beneath
his strolling Lord.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Before the Spanish Eleonora took the space,
it was the Chapel of the Faults.
Dominicans confessed their sins out loud.
You see them painted on another wall
rows and rows of
monks
pretending
not to mind.
The power of Florence. The
piety.
Sweetgrass. I can’t forget the herding of a hundred thousand
sheep across the Beartooth Mountains. Magnificent
bewildered creatures caught in blinding white.
The looks upon their faces
—the
men in Peter’s boat
(After Andrea di Bonaiuto’s
frescoes in Santa Maria Novella, Florence)
After several decades as a classical music critic, Lesley Valdes returned to her first love and completed a degree from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
