By

Carolyn Mayer

Through the smokey haze of the pine lit candles, and

the blaring closed caption TV, I held my ear close

to Nana’s reaching words.  Her tales of chipped and worn

ornaments became myth angels, stars and bells.  With

the blaze of her lit cigarette, her slow and vast utterances

trailed into the kitchen, searching. . . hands fumbled through

the torn corridors of the corrugated box. . . search, for the

lost dove.  Each trinket, the day’s sustenance in the fatigue

of winter’s lost hour.  “Lost?” she thought, I said.  And she

rolled her eyes as Nana does; and from the drawer removed

a plastic wrapped card, St. Anthony’s prayer, and made it

clear, “What is lost can be found.”  On the way home, mute

conversations circled round my head and breathed the spectral

retelling of tarnished angels, stars and bells.

And in the passing winters, in the cling of breached snows,

I can hear the mute conversation, “Whatever is lost can be

found.”