Where Childhood Lives

I

Here are the elders,
looking out of
another place
as it was in a far summer.
Their time is before them.
Another time frames them,
but they do not know it.
I am a voice in their bones,
but they cannot hear me.

II

I am the small grim one
closing one eye against the sun,
clutching handlebars.
I don't like
whatever has just passed
on my left,
and the curve of the earth
is not to be trusted.

III

This woman is showing
an orange tree
she is growing from seed.
Dead forty years,
she will pick these oranges
when they ripen
and peel one, singing absently
the same five notes;
she will eat half
and give me half.
The pulp is sweet and sticky.

IV

This man lived
on his mule's back
where I sometimes perch
in the sweaty vise of his arms.
His farm smells of leather and heat.
A slow tide of straw hats
is flowing home around us
for the noon meal;
our ragged shadow rides under us,
pinned to our four hoofs.

V

This is the Virgin Mary
poised on a crescent moon.
She is shedding grace
like a fragrance
from both white hands.
Above her, lizards
patrol the wall for flies;
before her, votive candles bloom.
Someone is fingering beads:
the Virgin is pleased
with the small cool room,
pleased with the white pitcher
on its corner stand,
glad of the low voice
hailing her by name.

VI

Here are the two of us,
looking out of now, this northern
autumn of wild cherry trees.
Most of our time is behind us.
Before us is more time
we wish ourselves into,
but it is your time, not ours.
You who are ours are somewhere
before us, adrift from our bodies.
We cannot see you, but
we are thinking out to you.

Rhina P. Espaillat is a poet and teacher, born in the Dominican Republic but who has spent all of her adult life in the United States. The author of Lapsing to Grace (1992) and Where Horizons Go (1998), winner of the 1998 T.S. Eliot Prize, her prize-winning work has been widely anthologized. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

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