Simona Carini
Born in Perugia, Italy, a graduate of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Milan, Italy) and of Mills College (Oakland, CA), Simona Carini writes nonfiction and poetry and has been published in various venues, in print and online. She lives in Northern California with her husband and works as an academic researcher in Medical Information Science. Her website is www.simonacarini.com
The Crypt
Shady, the Basilica, cool
light filtering through paned
windows, draws a path,
through redwoods it marbles
the ground, a creek or a bird’s whisper.
Christ looks down from the apse.
I descend into the crypt,
Saint Ambrose lies in a glass casket—
a skeleton—in bishopric robes.
I sit with him, my holdfast,
with a fallen redwood too,
look for conversation
in places born sacred.
Ghazal of the Soccer Ball
Murano lies just across Venice, a short motoscafo ride:
Seven tiny islands linked by bridges, cradled by lagoon tide.
Waves of tourists wash ashore, surge, rattle glass
sparkling in shop windows, beckoning the buyers’ tide.
As the sun lingers on the western edge poised to dive,
from the motoscafo we alight, swim against the departing visitors’ tide.
Vaporous light glazes canal-side houses in wide brushstrokes,
silence seeps into Murano’s calli and campi like a king tide.
Footsteps, conversations, front doors closing—
chimes of lives lived to the rhythm of the lagoon’s tide.
A soccer ball rolls towards us and he rescues it,
tosses it back to the children playing at eventide.
In the sunset’s glow lighting window panes, I catch a glimpse
of a bobbing sphere: the soccer ball riding the tide.
In Murano, where glass balls hang in windows,
a plastic soccer ball is let go, like time and tide.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 