“Prego” by Ingrid Wendt

Ask for something, Per
favore, please, the answer is
Prego. Please.

Thank you, Grazie, thank you,
you say. Instead of you’re welcome?
Prego. The answer is please.

Prego, listen, here in Italy, every
time you think you’re polite, this lift
of the verbal eyebrow, this rise

and fall of the voice like a hand
on its way to your shoulder, insistent
lifeline picking you up,

letting you go
again. No problem! Prego
pulls up the covers and tucks you in.

Cape of Saint Martin. Communion
wafer on each Italian tongue. Prego.
Please, Prego, I pray to you,

Prego, don’t
worry. Let me
do something for you.

But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of the light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. – 1 Thess 5:4-5

I am so happy to say that four of my new poems will be published in the Fall issue of Nine Mile Magazine <—-click to go to site.

I am writing again.

Here’s one of the four:

Fountains and Shadows

You seek comfort, I know, but
your mother’s gone

and her house, a tiny widow’s
cottage, hides in a bed

of bittersweet, rosemary,
and the slight shadow

of a passing crow.

Oh, how this house
would glow every morning.

When you say good bye
the sun is up and flocks

of quiet birds cloud the sky.

And this is where our road turns,
by the lake like a mirage

under an autumn sky,
fish so hungry they’re

frenzied following a spray
of  mayflies, where once you said

Poppy, Poppy look!
It’s a fountain of a day.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown. ~ Walt Whitman

The country that is nowhere is the real home. – Thomas Merton, journal, May 30, 1968