Revision, Exile, posting for DVerse Poetics

 Tera Zajack, Coming Home

A few quick notes:  I was astounded by this image, because it looks so much like the seacliff village Scylla where I would give my  good leg to live the expat life where Homer himself was so taken with the beauty of the Strait of Messina that it inspired the Odyssey!

In 1973 I was staked to a trip to Europe, met a southern Italian man in Verona and took a train down the coast of Italy alone to rendezvous with him..We took a day trip to Scylla and I lost my heart to the villas built into the cliffs.  Clearly no poet could have asked for more inspiration than that experience. Moreover, vis a vis the image I selected today, the night before my train left my artist friend Julia Marshall painted me in a moon-balloon in a basket floating down the coast, being greeted by a little family.  It was all very much like that, and this amazing piece resonates with me in all of these ways.  One of my poems follows.  My memoir of this experience is posted in its entirety: Nightfall in Verona . 

Exile

Now I am in Rapallo, the boats tied

at the dock.  My hair is dark again and I

climb from the skiff  and stride along past

the mustard-colored villas.  I sit at a table

back in the redolent shade where roses

embellish the blurred frescoes of war.

An old woman comes by, dragging sacks

of baguettes behind her in a cart. I buy a loaf

and lean it on the other chair, il dolce pane

and I together in the shade, the glittering

red geraniums in the window box.  It is afternoon

but I write a chanson du matin, a morning psalm,

on a stained piece of paper, tucking it into

my pocket.  Somewhere out there coming from

a long distance, the mariner. Within, the swan,

capable, strong, wide-winged and armed

for the distance.This is what I am,

not someone on the lam with

a bad leg and a crook in her back, few

years left with which to write more entreaties

to the moon, the sun, the stars.

Now the swan spreads her shining twin

rivers and rises, gliding off on the oceanic

currents, tears from the burning air streaming

back from her black mask. She flaps and glides,

settling herself then at the calling buoy, waiting

for all who come for the bread of love

rowing in from the lavender dark.

cc

from my collection of Italy/opera inspired poems, The Listener's Delirium.

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copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2011