Tag: life

November 15, 2025 (55)

dianarenee5 Comments

And then one day you wake up and it’s your 55th birthday.  Which amuses you because that’s an awfully big number and doesn’t really feel like it belongs to you.  Although, clearly, it does.  If you think about your stories, you have to admit you can’t collect this many of them in 25 years or 30.

Your cats are somewhere on the periphery taking naps and the sun is burning off the dawn fog.  Your significant other is off serving breakfast to tourists—something you refuse to do—in your favorite beach town about 20 minutes away.  You’ll make the coffee cake and the gallo pinto for them, but no one is taking away your mornings.  They belong to you. 

You can make statements like that, stuff your hands in your pockets, and refuse to budge if you want when you’re 55.  Nice.

You feel an ache in your heart, though, because your husband was 55 when he suddenly got cancer and died.  You aren’t worried about repeating that yourself, but you are aware of the juxtaposition between how he felt on his 55th birthday (perpetually exhausted) and how you feel on yours (tired from last night’s big catering job).  You miss him.  You can’t believe how you have learned to live without him, but you had to.  It was the best/only choice.

You don’t have any plans for today other than cooking up more coffee cake and gallo pinto for the breakfasts in the coming days, and you hope you finally sit down and write the blog post you‘ve been meaning to write.  You hope you think of something to say.  And as the temporada alta is unleashing over Guanacaste, you have emails to answer and accounting to do at your desk no matter who’s birthday it is.

They’re going to break ground for your house on Wednesday, si dios quiere.  And you really hope s/he does.   You are trying not to think about it because if you think about it, you might get too excited to sleep.  And you need your sleep.  You HAVE to be lucid and well-organized to keep your catering business going while building your house, both of which are happening in opposite directions of your physical location, which is in the middle of nowhere and you only have one car.  No pressure.  But you have to spend the night sleeping, not wondering (like you did the night before last) where the workers are going to go to the bathroom. 

So this is the year.  You are going to have your very own house on your very own lot, with your very own cats and your very own trees and your very own jasmine bushes.   You never minded renting and have always loved moving, but for whatever reason, you suddenly felt possessed to do this instead.  And you try to follow the voice inside your heart as best you can.

In the kitchen, you can hear the sound of the cat food bowl bumping on the floor which means that big fat sapo who lives under the refrigerator is stealing the cat food, and let’s just say it’s not the cheap kind.  It’s time to get moving. And you are very hungry and need more coffee. You think that although by “the world’s” definition of success you are definitely a bit of a failure, you have, in fact, succeeded at what you care about.  And you love knowing that if the 10 or 25 or 35 year-old version of you could see you now, they would be so very proud.

Density

dianarenee1 Comment

I’m riding a tour bus through the streets of Naples. If you’ve never been to Naples, put it on your list.  I’m riding the bus with—that’s a good question.  Who am I riding the bus with?  I don’t have a term for this type of relationship.   We’ll call her Rosa.  Once, we were married to brothers, so you might say she is my sister-in-law.  But the brothers are dead, and the one that was once my husband has been dead for so long that I now have another husband, so who am I riding the bus with?  I could say she’s my friend, which would be somewhat true, but also somewhat false.  You choose your friends, but Rosa and I didn’t choose each other.  We are family, but I no longer have a name for how.  We did choose to take this trip to Naples together, though, and to get on this bus.

Castello dell’Ovo, Naples

The port, the castles, the zillion churches, and beeping herds of motor scooters are zooming by us on all sides and I think, “What a shame Pio didn’t get to bring me to Naples.  He would have loved that.”  Then a little giggle bubbles up inside me as I realize OF COURSE Pio brought me to Naples.  Why else would I be on this bus with Rosa, listening to the Italian guide channel, humming along to the songs?  How else could this have happened?   And I feel quite delighted.

It’s cheaper when only one of you has to buy a plane ticket, a bus ticket, and pizza.  It’s easier when only one of you has to figure out how to be gone from work.  One of us is more of a particle (that would be me) and one of us is more of a wave, now.  One of us is denser and the other lighter. 

It’s easier, in ancient cities, to feel less bound to things like time.  It’s easier, after you live through a death, to feel less bound to things like density.  I love to consider the fact that everything is mostly made up of nothing, anyway.  That atoms are mostly “empty” space, so that what “is” and what “isn’t” are more the same than different.  When I say I “love to consider” that, I mean it literally.  I love to sit with it and try to feel it, try to imagine it.  Tangible, imaginary, present, past, future…are all made up almost entirely of the same material.  The difference is negligible.

All of that is very lovely.  But in the evening Rosa turns the tv on and all of the sudden the world is full of war and inconceivable suffering.  Which doesn’t feel at all like the peaceful nothing of empty space where time is a big pond you can swim in.  How can all of this be possible, simultaneous?

I don’t know. One minute I’m on a tour bus humming along to “O Sole Mio” and the next minute I am aware of the apocalypse that is also happening. 

We had a fantastic view of Vesuvius from the second story of the bus.  How in the name of common sense can so many people be living so close to this enormous volcano?  All of us know what volcanoes are capable of and all of us know that Vesuvius is not to be trusted.  Even though lava and crumbling buildings are mostly made of nothing, I wouldn’t like to be beneath either one of them. 

Ironies are everywhere.

On the subject of war and exploding volcanos, I don’t think it’s actual death that I am afraid of.  I’m already mostly made of nothing.  I’m afraid of suffering.  Of pain.  That small percentage of particle that is physical and can feel sensations changes everything.  At all cost, I don’t want it to be cut, burned, crushed.

Let’s not talk about that anymore.  Let’s get back on the bus.  Let’s not look at Vesuvius.  Let’s admire the Castello dell’Ovo.  How it sits between the land and the sea for 2000 years.  Let’s think about how 8 years can go by after your husband dies and how both of your spirits go through a transition.  And then both of you are ok.  Different, but quite alright.  And the castle is full of tourists, not knights in armor, and the ocean still laps at its feet.

Rosa and I get off the bus and are walking back to the hotel, trying not to get run over by motor scooters.  Her husband has only been dead for 4 years and she still fights it.  The suffering makes her denser, it seems to me, and further from the lightness that is everything.   Our lives have been so different that we are an inconceivable pair. 

I’d like to sit at a table by the street after getting off the bus and have a cold drink—a Spritz, to be exact. I would ponder the castle and pray to Vesuvius to be nice.  But Rosa wants to go to the hotel room to lie down.  I wouldn’t mind sitting at a table “alone,” but I decide to go with her.  The dead brothers would appreciate that.  I can have a Spritz another day.  Besides, I have writing to do.

Follow Me

dianarenee1 Comment

follow me
to the brackish places
where warm muck mixes
with ocean salt and
last week’s rain
this is where land crabs
make their burrows
little fish hatch between
rotting twigs and
baby crocodiles wait,
their eyes floating like
bubbles at the surface,
for the return of their
hunting mothers

 

Sígueme

sígueme
a los lugares salobres
donde el lodo caliente se mezcla
con la sal del mar y 
lluvias de la semana pasada
aquí es donde los cangrejos
hacen sus hoyos
pecesitos nacen entre
ramas podridas y
cocodrilos infantes esperan,
sus ojos flotando como
burbujas en la superficie,
sus madres que andan
de caza

More of a Hum, Less of a Scream

dianarenee3 Comments

HABLANDO SOLA

I’ve been thinking about something. I’ve been thinking about it while I surf, while I ride my bike, in the early mornings when I’m neither awake nor asleep.


JUNE

It’s June. I don’t know what that means to you, but it for me it dislodges something that lives deep in my bone marrow. It brings me flashes of unthinkable doctor visits, sudden plane tickets, a long morning run when I understood exactly what was happening even though I didn’t dare to say it, and the surreal sensation of packing suitcases for a trip that wasn’t a vacation.  A lot of those days turned into poems.

Probably, eventually, if I live long enough, June will just be June.  It will be different. Everything is always different, eventually. You can quote me on that if you want to. You can bet your life savings on it.

After June comes July. July reminds me of long walks, fruit and vegetable markets, chemotherapy appointments, and the ER. August follows, with more of the same. September is a hard month that takes me on a trip through the process of dying. Getting out of your body is as messy as getting into it.  And then there’s October with its interminable silence. Clocks tick 24 hours a day. The sunlight is sharp and cold.


THAT WAS 3 YEARS AGO

You wonder how many more times I’m going to tell you this story? I don’t know. Imagine how many times it tells itself to me. 

It’s a good story.  If today was the end of it, you could say it has a happy ending.  How’s that for optimism?


CELLS

I read once that every 7 years every cell in the human body is replaced by a new cell. Have I written about this before? I might have. I think it’s important.

I’m writing about it now, because I’ve been thinking about my body. Almost half of my body wasn’t even there, three years ago, when Pio and I took off for Milan. These hands are only sort of the hands that packed the suitcases. The feet that walked through pairs of shoes on the streets of Milan trying to make space for all this—those feet are only sort of my actual feet, today. Half the cells in my body—from my ankle bones to the synapses in my brain—never even knew Pio. Half of these eyes never saw him. Isn’t that crazy?

And this: half the cells that make up my brain where the stories are held aren’t even the original ones who recorded the stories. They do the job of remembering the stories they’re told, I guess, but they weren’t even there in my head on the airplane, or at the market trying to remember how to say “cauliflower” in Italian, or in front of the TV together splitting a beer and potato chips (because at that point, why not?), or in the hospital room holding hands when that was all that was left. Imagine. A few years more and not even one cell in my body will have been there.

We remember things experienced in other bodies.


HARD POETRY

I think that explains everything. It explains how we can go on living. Because with every hour and every day, our bodies turn into other bodies that haven’t even experienced our own stories. Our brain cells that remember them were told the stories by previous generations of brain cells. It’s more hard poetry than hard science, but what a perfect place for them to meet. The stories remain, but something about the sound they make is different. Something about the tone. The sound coming from my bones is there, but it’s more of a hum, less of a scream.

You can’t stop it. You can’t make it hurry up. If you just keep eating some food, drinking some water, sleeping at night, and staying out of the jaws of crocodiles, it happens on its own. It’s beautiful. It’s brutal. It doesn’t really matter what you call it.

 

EVENTUALLY

Do I sit around ruminating on this all the time?  I do not.  But it’s June.  Part of me commences a 4-month walk through The Valley of The Shadow of Death.

It’s alright. I fear no evil. 

Everything, eventually, is different.

The Universe of This Is Not What I Signed Up For

dianareneeLeave a comment

I would like to say something meaningful at a time like this, with our world locked down and life suspended, but those are tall orders. What is meaningful? I could describe my daily experience to you, the peacefulness of my days and my nights. I am among the lucky ones, at this moment. I know that. Luck can change on a dime—I know that, too.

I am in familiar territory. I am the mapmaker of this place we are. I was exploring its contours before you all arrived.

There are ways in which what has happened in the rest of the world has thrown it, en mass, into my reality–the reality of grief. Not in every way, but in some ways. Now you have all had the rug yanked out from under you. Now your world has been shaken to pieces, too. Now you are discovering what I meant two years ago when I wrote about sitting and listening to silence, trying to take it all in. When I wrote about the vertigo of having no solid reference points. The waiting.

Welcome to the planet called Loss. Welcome to the solar system called I Did Everything Right But Everything Still Turned Out Wrong. Welcome to the galaxy called All You Can Do Is Wait. It’s in the universe of This Is Not What I Signed Up For. The tour will begin in 10 minutes.

What are we waiting for? We don’t know. Whatever comes next.
When will it get here? Someday. Some other day that is not today.
Are we going to like it? Maybe. Maybe not.
Do we get our old life back? I won’t. We’ll find out if you do.

Life, again, has proved right this belief of mine that no matter what it is that you think is going to happen, the thing that actually happens will be something else. Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Realize that what comes will not be what you expected or prepared for. Breathe. Wait. Learn to walk barefoot over rocks, bake bread, and sleep with the windows open. You wouldn’t believe how useful these things can be.

Meaningful? Perhaps not.

But, true.

On this planet, The Past and The Future are separate islands in a sea so vast you cannot see one from the other.

Lettuce Soup

dianarenee2 Comments

I don’t know. Whatever the question is, that’s my answer. At least I’m honest. 

The things I do know aren’t the answers to anything in particular.

The Tower of Babel

I think of the Tower of Babel. (If you missed Sunday School that Sunday, click here.) Before we all went into lock-down, we as a human species were one thing, invincible. Now we’re all in our corners–sent to our rooms, so to speak. This is different than the Tower of Babel story, because in the Bible story their languages were scrambled so they couldn’t talk to each other. We can still talk to each other. We talk too much, repeating things we heard someone else say, getting into heated disagreements in/over little black letters on a screen. The divisions are in place. It’s Babel. Different, but the same.

“They” closed the borders of the countries of the world. I live in a town that functions 100% on tourism. We don’t have any other industry. We don’t have any other way of earning our daily bread. We (not me personally at this time, but the citizens of the place I live) are hungry.

The streets are quiet. I remember 25 years ago when this quiet was normal. It was The Thing, not the absence of a thing. But it was different, then. There were more trees and fewer empty buildings. I love the quiet. I love the stillness. Finally something that is true is revealed from beneath something that was artificial. Does that make sense? To me, it does.

We fear crime. Stores, closed until further notice, have been emptied by their owners. Naked mannequins stand in shop windows. Restaurants are dark as caves, emptied of tables and chairs. Where has all the furniture gone?

I forgot there were this many monkeys. The hillsides are full of their voices just before dawn. They are everywhere. I thought they were gone–a thinning, endangered population that human activity was slowly extinguishing. Not even. There is nothing wrong with the monkeys. They just didn’t like us is all. Sometimes I’m not sure I like us.

Parrots. Have you ever listened to them? On a morning with no buses, no construction noise, no music from restaurants trying to attract foot traffic. I sometimes laugh at their jokes even though I don’t understand the words.

The ocean. It doesn’t need us. We sigh and suffer for it. We need it on our skin. We dream of it at night. And there it is, luminous, rising, falling, breathing its salty warm breath into the world, cleaner and more crystalline than ever. It isn’t one bit sad.

“When Things Get Back to Normal”

Nothing is ever going to be the same after this. I don’t think “things” are going to go back to being “like they were.” I could be wrong–let’s just take that as a given no matter what I say. We talk about, “after this is over,” and of course it will be over. Everything ends. But maybe we should drop the phrase “when things get back to normal.” Am I the only one who foresees a new normal?

I might know something about new normals.

Having the world implode into lockdown and watching society melt isn’t entirely dissimilar to the experience of having my husband become sick and die. It isn’t the same, but one is reminiscent of the other. Both things happened suddenly. Both things yank the rug out from under you. Both things cause you to have to rethink ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING about your life. Both things destroy what was and leave you with god-only-knows-what afterward. Both things are surrounded by a lot of silence. Both of them involve waking up each morning and having to remember how “now” is different from “then” before you know how to live.

Remember how I confessed to walking and running on the beach with my eyes closed, trying to see with my skin and my ears? Now I can do it on my bike in the street. In little spurts, early or late. More than ever, being able to sense what is around me without being able to see it feels like a critical skill.

Lettuce Soup

What’s around me/us that I cannot see?

I’m told there’s a virus–literally “your death of a cold.” I can’t see it. Should I be afraid of the air?

There is hunger around me. I can feel that. In the empty streets, I see friends who wave and smile. I also see strange people that I never seen before–people who eye me in a way I don’t like. In a house a few miles from here a few nights ago 4 people were shot. It sounds drug-related–somebody owed the wrong person too much money or something. I’m not afraid of being shot in the night. I’m not afraid of being hungry. I was also not afraid the government would shut the borders and that the restaurant owners would find it prudent to take home the tables and chairs. But they have.

Some people–people I know–are looking at the worst days of their lives. I am not. Not yet. Things have to be much different than this before they compare to the worst day of my life. I’ve been poor before. I’ve been hungry. I don’t talk about it much. Once, I made lettuce soup for my stepdaughter and pretended it was delicious (it wasn’t bad, really) because it was the only thing we had. I am a long long way from preparing lettuce soup for a hungry child who depends on me.

Something is Happening

Where am I? What is going on?

I love the silence. No cars. No buses. No dump trucks. No cement mixers. No music from bars. Nothing. I might be obsessed with it. I feel a sort of jealousy regarding it–it is mine and you cannot have it. I don’t want anyone or anything to touch it. A noisy motorcycle drove by this morning and I held my breath. It interrupted the locusts and the wind I was listening to. For a moment it drowned out the sound of the sea and it was like not knowing where I was.

I don’t want things to go back to the way they were. I loved things the way they were. I was happy, then. But something has happened. Something is happening. Do you feel it? Things can be different. Better. Can’t they? If there is more than one way to be, can we be another way now that we’ve had this pause. Like children redirected after a time out?

Listen…  

Is that the sound of the meek inheriting the earth?

Superpower / Duty

dianarenee2 Comments

I’ve been thinking about humans, as a species.

We seem to be undergoing a species-wide crisis while all the other things on the planet are doing fine. Better, in fact, since our carbon footprint suddenly shrank several shoe sizes.

Some people say this is Mother Earth putting us back in our place. I don’t know. Maybe. Nature does this to all of her species once in a while–I don’t assume it’s anything personal. We’d like to think we get special treatment, but we don’t really.

I go to the beach to breathe in the sky and search for my sanity, and I find myself wondering: what does the planet even need us for? Besides building glass and concrete cities to cover the land and sucking fossil fuels out of the earth only to dump them into the sky, what can we do that other species can’t? Even an elephant can paint a picture.

So?

I know what the earth needs buffalo for: to trim and fertilize the plains. It needs birds and monkeys to spread seeds that keep the jungles growing. Wolves cull the smaller mammals in the mountains. Hawks and foxes keep the mice population down. But people? Would there be too much of anything without us?

I don’t know. Not that I can think of. So what is our thing? We must have one.

And then I thought of one thing–one thing humans can do that other species can’t–not dogs, crocodiles, guanacaste trees, blue whales, daffodils, kitty-cats, boa constrictors, or bougainvillea.

We can appreciate aesthetic beauty.

Plants and animals are capable of appreciation–I have no doubt about that–but I don’t think they appreciate the beauty of a sunset or a brilliant rainbow. My cat laying under the hibiscus bush appreciates the shade and the cool ground, but he doesn’t care about the flowers. The dogs playing with coconuts on the beach love the game but they aren’t sighing over the colors in the clouds. A rose bush likes bees I’m sure, but it doesn’t appreciate how beautiful a butterfly is.

People can do that. It might be our superpower. It might be our duty.

I feel compelled to state these observations as I watch our species struggle in an identity crisis brought on by something so small as to be invisible. Other species can love. Other species can help each other. Other species can build and create. But are we the only ones who can give value to something simply for its aesthetic beauty? I think we are.

And?

And, I don’t know. Is appreciating beauty going to save my life or yours if it comes down to that? I don’t see how. But there are a lot of things I don’t know, a lot of things I cannot conceive of in my little mind. I’ve got no health claims to make (unless we’re talking about mental health?); I just think this would be a great time to find something beautiful and appreciate the heck out of it. Go ahead: a cloud, a flower, a person, an animal, music, a work of art…

I’m joining you. It can’t hurt. Never underestimate the power of things you don’t understand and don’t even necessarily believe.

L’accento L’avrò Per Vita: Poesie in Italiano da CERTA COME IL POMERIGGIO

dianareneeLeave a comment

Il sabato 9 novembre ho fatto una piccola presentazione del mio nuovo libro di poesia e ho letto 5 poesie primo in inglese, poi in italiano.  Il libro, CERTAIN AS AFTERNOON / CERTA COME IL POMERIGGIO e una raccolta di poesie sull’amore, la vita, e la morte.

Un mio amico ha fatto dei video della presentazione e oggi, qui, condivido con voi le 5 poesie lette in italiano. 

Non ridete. L’accento Americano l’avrò per vita.

 

1 di 5: Una poesia che descrive il mondo di “prima,” e finisce con un avvertimento

2 di 5: Sul momento in cui la malatia è scoperta

3 di 5: Una poesia che parla della morte e il primo momento (di momenti infiniti) di silenzio

4 di 5:  Contemplando cos’è che si deve fare quando hai gia fatto tutto quello che potevi fare

5 di 5: Una poesia riguardo i cenere, promesse, e il mare

Namaste

 

You Can Always Come for the Cookies / Videos from a Poetry Reading

dianarenee2 Comments

On Saturday, November 9 at Tamarindo’s one and only bookstore, I held a small launch party for and reading of my new poetry collection, CERTAIN AS AFTERNOON. I think I had realistic expectations regarding how much of a crowd a poetry book about death might draw, so I was pleasantly surprised by how many people showed up. Thirty is the number I heard: old friends, new friends, strangers, other widows.  I sold all the books I have.

I made a lot of cookies and bought some wine for the occasion. Even if you don’t love poetry (not the biggest draw in a surf town), you can always come for the cookies. I’m good with that.

A dear friend of mine videoed my presentation in short segments, which, today I am sharing with you. Following, is the introduction to CERTAIN AS AFTERNOON, and each of the 5 poems in English.

A neighbor who is also a poet made this comment to me after reading CERTAIN AS AFTERNOON:

“You say it’s a book about death, but it isn’t. It’s a book about life. You use shades of black to show us all the other colors.”

 

INTRO 1: HOW THE BOOK CAME TO BE, AND HOW IT CAME TO BE IN TWO LANGUAGES

INTRO 2:  WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK?

POEM 1 OF 5: A poem that paints a picture of “before” and ends with a warning

POEM 2 OF 5: About discovering sickness

POEM 3 OF 5: A poem about death and the first (of an infinate number) moment of silence

POEM 4 OF 5: On what you must do after you’ve done everything

POEM 5 OF 5: Later, contemplating ashes, the ocean, the idea of going home

Namaste

CERTAIN AS AFTERNOON / CERTA COME IL POMERIGGIO

Available Now: CERTAIN AS AFTERNOON / CERTA COME IL POMERIGGIO

dianareneeLeave a comment

My new poetry collection, Certain as Afternoon, is now availble on Amazon.com, Amazon.it, Amazon.es, Amazon.whatever.

Mia nuova raccolta di poesie, Certa Come il Pomeriggio. è ora disponibile per ordinare su Amazon.com, Amazon.it, Amazon.es, Amazon.tutto.

I love this book. I love the terrible story it tells because it’s my story, our story. When stories are all you have, you’d be amazed how much you can love them. A lot. They don’t have to be pretty. Certain as Afternoon covers about a year and a half, calendar time. Which equal about 7 eternities in real life. I didn’t write the poems as the things happened; I wrote them later. A thing has to get done happening before you know what it was. All you can do while it’s happening is hold on for the ride.

Adoro questo libro. Adoro la storia terribile che racconta perché è la mia storia, la nostra storia. Quando le storie sono tutto ciò che hai, è incredibile quanto puoi amarle. Tantissimo. Non importa che non siano belli. Certa Come il Pomeriggio racconta la storia di circa un anno e mezzo, tempo di calendario. Equivalente a 7 eternità nella vita reale. Le poesie non le ho scritte quando accadevono le cose; le ho scritte più tardi. Una cosa deve finire di succedere prima che tu sappia cosa fosse. Tutto quello che puoi fare mentre sta succedendo è rimanere aggrappata.

If you helped me translate this book, please don’t order it—I will get one to you.

Se tu mi hai aiutato a tradurrre questo libro, per favore non ordinarlo—ti lo regalerò io. Se tu sei nella famiglia di Pio, non comprarlo. Ti lo vorrei regalare.

This is how we begin:

Si comincia così: 

New Poetry Book Next Monday / Nuovo Libro di Poesie Lundì Prossimo

dianareneeLeave a comment

Certain as Afternoon / Certo Come il Pomeriggio is ready for you. Next Monday, one week from today, I will post a live link to it on Amazon.com, and you will be able to order it. The price is $10. It will also be available on Amazon.it (if I understand correctly) for anyone in Italy who wants to purchase it. I have not made it an ebook at this time because, honestly, I don’t like ebooks. This book, especially, wants an actual physical body.

Certain as Afternoon / Certo Come il Pomeriggio è pronto per voi.  Lunedì prossimo, a una settimana da oggi, vi darò un link per farvelo trovare su Amazon.com.  Il costo è $10. Sarà anche disponibile su Amazon.it (se ho capito bene) per chiunque vorrà acquistarlo in Italia.  In questo momento non l’ho creato come ebook perché, onestamente, gli ebook non mi piacciono. Questo libro, in particolare, vuole avere un corpo fisico.

Cover design in progress


Eternity, At Least / La Eternità, Almeno

Whole Fennel/Finocchio Intero

dianareneeLeave a comment

This poem, from Certain as Afternoon, is a the story of a day.   I talk to myself in this poem, explaining to myself what happens on the day Pio is in the hospital for tests, and he calls me to tell me the bad news I have already intuited. Why must I tell myself about it? Because you have to explain things to yourself over and over as you try to understand, open, make room for everything.

In Certain as Afternoon, the voice in the poems moves around.  It switches between pages from first person to second and to third.  The voice speaks to me.  It speaks to you.  It speaks to the one who is dying.  Sometimes the voice speaks to the poem.  Sometimes the voice becomes the poem.  It sounds complicated, but really it isn’t.

First in English, dopo in Italiano.

 

Whole Fennel

when he calls you
on the phone
from the Policlinico to
tell you he is
dying, you say
alright
and
i’ll be there soon

then you go to the
park and walk,
order the trees
not to let you
cry. you don’t want
him to see you with
red eyes and
puffy lids

you stop at the
mercato for his favorites
prosciutto crudo and
whole fennel

it isn’t going to be today,
anyway

at the hospital you will
sit together at a
table in the sun
eat sandwiches

share fennel and
both wonder
if it is true

 

Finocchio Intero

quando lui ti chiama
al telefono
dal Policlinico per
dirti che sta
morendo, tu dici
va bene
e
arrivo subito

poi vai al
parco e cammini,
preghi agli alberi
di non farti
piangere. non vuoi che
lui ti veda con gli
occhi rossi e
gonfi

ti fermi al mercato a prendere
i suoi spuntini preferiti
prosciutto crudo e
finocchio intero

comunque
non sarà oggi

all’ospedale vi
siederete insieme ad un
tavolo al sole
mangerete dei panini

condividirete il finocchio e
vi chiederete
tutti e due
se è vero