Dorothy North
Pilgrims
Is he baptized? is what I pick out of the
shards
of words the Haitian voodoo street queen sprays
at us. August light rains down on the outdoor
table where we have come for lunch, my friend
and I, to sit and feast on her grandson before
she gives him back to his parents. But this
woman with her own vision has crossed
the street, drawn by the baby, rosaries
of sweet fat at his wrists. Sharks circle
her ankles at the hem of her slashed
black skirt. She is the color of bruised
fruit that didn’t sell, her head a tower of rags.
We are alarmed: does she mean to snatch him
and set him up on an altar ringed with candles
where she lives under the bridge abutment?
I’m just the grandmother, my friend says, as if
that
could get her off the hook. God bless you, I
say, meaning:
Please go away. But she stays for now, a pilgrim
among her own kind: three women bent
toward the light that funnels down on the gold hair
pulsing where the crown hasn’t closed.
Copyright
© by Dorothy North 2006. All rights reserved.
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