Shirley Latessa

From "Summing Up"

Du Midi Country

Those medieval memories
what carries them?

Surely not the canal
dug centuries later
or the plane trees planted

along the bank to offer
shade, shelter --- and something else.
A respite from dreams? Despair?

Perhaps the town of Agda
strung along the river now
pushed back from the sea by nature's birthing.

Or the Hérault river rushing wildly south
dumping its knowledge into a sea
that already knows too much.

Let's say the river. Good. But not the Barcelona
train howling through the Pyrenees back
home to Spain. But, yes, the mountains

in perpetual movement between two thrones.
And what about the rain
that fell on heretic and believer

alike? Or the fog crawling
like crusaders through the brush
spying on the village from the safety

of the sycamores. Who amongst us
carried by an indolently moving barge
through a cut in the land hides

in a fold of the mind those medieval memories?
Surely my daughter, sad-eyed
and wounded, watching from the deck

unable to see the color or the light
for which this part of France is famous.
In sleep I see my daughter's spirit flee

again and again through shadow and mist
a burning wraith forever running
from the nearly remembered fire.