Vera Icona or Volto Santo

Vera Icona or Volto Santo

Yesterday a student told me about her best

friend, how he put a towel over his head

and laid it down on a train

track. 

And later, while waiting

after school, first for my daughter, then my son,

I watched the five-year-olds sprint

from the line to their mothers,

shrieking

for the joy of her face.  And I wondered

at the distance between

that unrelenting love and that boy

with his ear against the thick vibe of cool steel

biding

his ride?  And I thought, hearing

Rachel say she missed him still, she missed him,

how in some way she was Veronica holding out

her veil days after the crucifixion,

at arms

length, and there’s the face, and one

or two thistles stuck in the weave.

Shit.  Isn’t life Shit. A Green Mile runner

tred by the desiccated?

Isn’t it

the edge of a mother’s bed on Mother’s Day.

Isn’t it the space between the final

extubation and the gathering

at the rail, her percolating moan

drifting

like a struck bird, and isn't it, I’d like to think now,

a hand-woven head veil, pinned

to the line after a long wash,

next to the sheets,

the jeans,

and children at dismissal, in awe

of this stiff wind, hiding in and out of it
the scurry from line to line, flash
and scoot and fall between it all,

then finding

the fingers that wipe them,
grasp them cheek to teeth
then just, and suddenly, let them
go.