by Elizabeth Volpe

I need to know how to praise what keeps on trying
Ann Silsbee

You mention Zurich, and I feel it on my tongue
like a tumor. Soldiers patrolled the airport that year, pointed
rifles from balconies. You not speaking again.
In Amsterdam the next summer we waited for our plane
to Rome, your head on my shoulder, bobbing
with each sleeping breath. Across the aisle a woman
in a babushka and two coats packed and unpacked
her suitcase, rolling out long wool dresses. I wanted you
to wake up so you could see this, so we could wonder
about it together. The woman spread the dark heavy
clothing across the plastic chairs, smoothed each
with knubbly hands, then lifted more from the suitcase
as if it were bottomless, garments streaming out,
black shawls, coats. It was as if she pulled night
like taffy from her bag, stretched it to cover cheap plastic day,
day in those mass-market colors: not-quite-orange,
tinny turquoise. You snored softly on my shoulder
and I wondered if I should shake you a little,
wipe the sweet bubble of drool from your chin.
Once out walking we saw two blackbirds scrapping
like angry five-year-olds, rolling, pouncing. At first
I thought it was one bird in distress, until the battle
clarified, and one became two. I asked what
could have made them so angry. They’re just mating,
you said. The old woman in Amsterdam raised dark arms
to roll one shirt inside another, mumbled as she tucked
them into her little bag, you still curled into some primal
place, I guessing at the world alive inside her,
seeing mountains, campaniles, small gray churches
with apertures for discarded babies, villages where water
is turned off from noon till five, like the one where your uncle
still hammers shoes for donkeys, where figs ripen
under the moon. I watched her fold and refold
these strange dark garments, uncertain why
I was suddenly so full of hope