TWO POEMS by Maria Zoccola

outside the dementia ward 

a woman tumbled fresh-hatched 
from the egg of herself is watching
small children plant geraniums 
in the garden’s empty places, knees 
in the dirt, steered by a lay sister who if not 
                                         a nun is still a woman 
jesus charged down from his cloud palace 
to kiss directly on the mouth. 
red is a color with many symbolic 
uses, not least of which the tongues 
we cage behind our teeth,
not least of which the velvet 
petals in their nodding clusters, 
hot-sauce hot-rod blood-hot pucker-up, 
extravagance in the wormful wet. 
inside are rooms with doors 
that do not lock and men 
who clutch their pillows like 
infants they bless and bless again, 
so much weight crushed 
against their ribs it’s spilling out
in words like yes and no and stop it
                                         i want you to stop it. 
new flowers coaxed from their cases. 
sun sliding between shrouds 
of gray. like penitents or mourners 
we work to the labors which humble 
us most, attended and searching, 
turning the earth with our spades, 
letting in the light. 

legacy

i walked out to the water. there was the tree 
with its round brown trunk and crown full
of leaves and ghosts and smoking embers,
and all around were more trees and small
green shrubs and large boulders wherever
was appropriate to place a boulder. the sky
folded down upon my head in one gray veil
that i took in my hands and tied beneath
my chin so that i became my grandmother,
and as my grandmother i caught white birds
in my skirt and ordered the blue mountains
to sit up straight and say hello to the world. 
at the water i bent at the waist to count 
reflections: stalks of grass and weed, un-
named hosts of pale shapes moving, my home 
on the rock, new-built and then ruined, food 
for men who move stones. myself, young-
old-young, rippled and smoothed by wind.