Villa Maria

All day my mother has worked

at learning to walk and speak.

Soon she'll be wheeled outside,

sunlight chattering from the bright

spokes of the chair she hates,

her useless arm casually arranged

on the plastic tray.

Last night on her TV

a shaman in Mombasa wrote

words from the Koran on a white

plate with saffron ink, then

dissolved them in rose water

to make his medicine.

Where I wait the trees

are a tenement of birds who've

fattened on the pity of visitors.

All afternoon a robin, harnessed

to flight, streaks through the tines

of an oak with scraps

for its young.

When she comes, I' report

what Father ate, read her the latest

batch of cards. She'll say

"playpen" for "radio" and call me

by my dead sister's name.

At dusk the robins will nest,

their orange breasts setting

like suns. In Kenya, the holy man

will rise to face Mecca

and choose the text to be consumed.

As if pressed in the pages

of a book, Mother will sleep

between sheets smoothed by the nuns

whose voices I hear now,

soaring upward like wings

in search of the thermals.