Aquerò

John Martone

Tufo
2018
 Aquerò
Copyright © 2018 by John Martone
isbn 978-1-387-77978-9
Aquerò
 Aquerò — “That one” in St. Bernadette’s dialect.

In observing a ray of sunlight stream throught the window, we notice that

the more it is pervaded with particles of dust, the clearer and more palpa-
ble and sensible it appears to the senses. Yet obviously the sun ray in itself
is less pure, clear, simple and perfect in that it is full of so many specks of
dust. We also notice that when it is more purified of these specks of dust
it seems more obscure and impalpable to the material eye. And the purer
it is, the more obscure and inapprehensible it seems to be. If the ray of
sunlight should be entirely cleansed and purified of all dust particles, even
the most minute, it would appeare totally obscure and incomprehensible
to the eye since visible things, the object of the sense of sight, would be
absent. Thus the eye would find no images on which to rest, because light
is not the proper object of sight but only the means by which visible things
are seen. If there is nothing visible off which the ray of light can reflect,
nothing will be seen. If the ray, then, were to enter through one window
and go out another without striking any quantitative object, it would be
invisible.

— St. John of the Cross

The Ascent of Mount Carmel
(trans. Kavanaugh & Rodriguez)
The calloused hands of one who’s done nothing

~5~
Living in a stone house I barely scratch the surface

Stones on a wooden table

everything left as it was

He holds up
his broken forefinger
A wholly shattered thing

~6~
Poverty
not a word
to pray with

Forever speaking your mother tongue with an accent

~7~
 Paestum, 470 BCE

The sarcophagus
painted inside — someone dives
into that sea

~8~
It’s over —
the immortal soul rises from
an Adirondack chair

Let go —
the weeping pine
grows a new branch

~9~
Palm Sunday
I miss the procession

Gas station coffee

for the wilderness
after communion

~ 10 ~
 After Santoka

My own version
wabi-sabi

failure

~ 11 ~
A spider sails
on its thread caught in sun
Good Friday

~ 12 ~
 Bonaventure visits the disabled

This world’s
a picture book
for the non-verbal

her wheelchair
glints in sun

Dante 2018

It’s one thing

to have no map

another
to say
nothing’s there

Frank Kermode

Already
a long

time
ago

The sense of
an ending

~ 13 ~
Holy Saturday
in the basement
work on my furnace

Dogwood flowers —
robin song — finished my cycle
of antibiotics

~ 14 ~
Prayer cards
and blue windows

~ 15 ~
Delicate jawbone
the teeth smaller than baby teeth
spring ephemerals

Backbones
of some small mammal
along a stream bluff

~ 16 ~
 Anthony

He planted
the lemon tree here
a child glows in his arms

Spring rain
hard bread and
no tablecloth

Pea-size
hail in
the sweet peas

~ 17 ~
 Garabandal

Nine pine trees —

the four girls
look straight up

Joey Lomangino

Fifty years
after the vision
life in Queens

~ 18 ~
The blind man
holds up a prayer card —
something for the morning

A 12 year-old girl
offers pebbles
to her vision

~ 19 ~
His bed —
threadbare
comforter

Giotto’s halo —
the flowerpot’s sunny rim
(another country)

~ 20 ~
Early spring
underground
miracles

Now I see —
a bird song’s
my grotto

~ 21 ~
Unplanted
my raised garden beds
those doorways

~ 22 ~
The pine —
uprooted
I watch myself die

~ 23 ~
My mother’s window keeping faith

The kitchen table a diorama

Her forehead —
she lay in bed
resting her hand on her forehead

~ 24 ~
Lighting my water heater
pilot light —
St. Francis’ cave

Tin doll-house
in plastic leaf-bag
like new

~ 25 ~
The seedling’s roots —
my fingerprint
a perfect match

The roots
wrapped in burlap
his dialect

Years later
that shovel —
what on earth became of my father’s shovel

~ 26 ~
A runner
for the table
a poem like lace

I stop to clean my glasses

while framing
an old woman’s lace

~ 27 ~
We took our time picking their coffins

Early spring
a flagstone
out of place

Thin poems
sweeping like
a clock’s second-hand

~ 28 ~
Sitting on
the bed’s edge
an imaginary life

~ 29 ~
Phrases —
such as

basil
seedlings

~ 30 ~
suddenly cotyledons

~ 31 ~
pin
point

let
tuce

seeds
my

left
hand’s

life
line

~ 32 ~
What color will the sweet peas be?

~ 33 ~
 Parable

spring equinox

You’d be better off

trimming branches
better off digging

I move seedlings
into the sun
read canto xxi

fill it out —
a bird nest
so much straw

~ 34 ~
Failed verses
riddled with holes
let in the light

Clear a space
let the light
do its work

~ 35 ~
That still
small voice

inside’s
not yours

~ 36 ~
 Suite for March 27

My dream
a glass

water
goblet

his gardening tools

How it feels —
all winter in a box
open the flaps now

My olive tree
flowers in a clay pot
little knowing...

~ 37 ~
 Giovanni Isaia

knows which
wild plants
to eat
could be
a poet

Living alone
and why not
talk to the saints

~ 38 ~
 Annunciation

Completely missed the annunciation

~ 39 ~
 Annunciation suite

The door
was closed

but you
appeared
within

branches
turn

into
sky

comforter

winter took
its toll on
this patchwork

The finest
rays of sun

stitch us
together

~ 40 ~
 Giovanni

Simple
things now

practice
writing
my name

spring of
my life
again

~ 41 ~
The next village —
he shrugs his shoulders
like my father

~ 42 ~
Nel principio —
mom and dad’s postwar
black box camera

~ 43 ~
Run an iron
over your pants

before going out

to garden

~ 44 ~
Short man
digs up
tree stump

~ 45 ~
Tree stump
takes

every
tool

When the tree stump

comes out —
azaleas

~ 46 ~
The azaleas planted —
all that dirt
tracked inside

~ 47 ~
Dawn — the outline
of a small house
sharpening

~ 48 ~
Fig tree cuttings
in a window
the communion of saints

planted the root ball

in its burlap
circa ‘62

~ 49 ~
Flowering dogwood
branching out
her lifespan

those pines —

still trip
on a root
land softly

~ 50 ~
 Wheelbarrow

Small plot —
this wheel
barrow

~ 51 ~
a wheelbarrow —
everything
he taught me

~ 52 ~
A drop of sweat
rings in the empty
wheelbarrow

Well-used
wheelbarrow

dinged-up
inside

~ 53 ~
Earth dumped-out
he holds up his hands —
wheelbarrow stigmata!

The yard’s full of light

I don’t have to plant
a dogwood

~ 54 ~
Planting stones
just-so for
stonecrop

my fingers
planting stonecrop
in the stones

~ 55 ~
Weak-eyed
toothless

planting
stonecrop

These pines
and stonecrop
my story

~ 56 ~
Rose quartz —
the stonecrop will be
bright yellow

My shovel clatters
in the empty
wheellbarrow —
done!

~ 57 ~
 Cursive

Childhood
it was a beehive

Second-grade
handwriting’s
see-through loops

~ 58 ~
Seedlings
their own
cursive

~ 59 ~
Silence
waiting for
the silence

Salamander
we’re seven years old

~ 60 ~
In her slippers
moving a tray of seedlings
into the sun

Wearing her apron

she waves goodbye in
the box-camera photo

~ 61 ~
 Anthony Loehr

All those shelves

of flowerpots
his inner life

~ 62 ~
Jigsaw puzzle
on the formica table
that lake upstate

~ 63 ~
Prie dieu
a good bench
for weeding

My walking stick
a weeding tool

the dandelion’s root

my spine

~ 64 ~
Baptistery —
The snail can’t see
its own shell’s shape

The garden’s
spinach plants fill-out
my birthday

~ 65 ~
Sixty-six years later the same roly-poly

~ 66 ~
Magnolias
bring the rain

the rain brings

dogwoods

I’ll forever
take sweet basil
leaves for eyelids

~ 67 ~
A figure
of light

the child
doesn’t know
who she is

Those curving
branches
outline
her face

~ 68 ~
As if she were
sitting beside me
folding a slip
of paper —

Azaleas
violets and bluebells
where’s mom?

~ 69 ~
Pink dogwoods beyond
the broken wood fence
I catch a splinter

Children together
under a dogwood
the lady takes a picture

~ 70 ~
Neatly
ordered

flower
garden

hospice

His last
words

once
again

Bird song —
looking

~ 71 ~
Caught
a glimpse

of the world
that’s all

The visible
spectrum

radiant
with open
arms

~ 72 ~
 prairie

Forever fifteen miles

the horizon —

an undistracted
wordlessness
silent prayer

~ 73 ~
Prairie distances —
the steeple becomes
a single pine

~ 74 ~
The village at dawn
I wake up early
I can’t stop dreaming

Falls to her knees

on the stones
in a vision

~ 75 ~
Sunlit olive shoots
the other world right where
I see this one

~ 76 ~
Mayday
the lace-leaf maple
making lace

House wren
on my sill
which way?

Williston Park

Mom —
May 8 1959 —
Our Lady of Pompeii!

~ 77 ~
Pruning knife —
a vine full
of commas

With several knives

he loses himself
in the garden

~ 78 ~
Waterproof ink
each plant its name
Latin is a modern tongue

~ 79 ~
House of porous stone
branches growing from windows now
and roof gone

Servo di M
mai libero dal sasso

pur’infinito

~ 80 ~
Oh you must
leave even this
light behind

~ 81 ~
Once the garden’s in I disappear

~ 82 ~