Saint's Lives - Adrienne J. Odasso

[highlyeccentric]

Saint's Lives

We saw them by the waterside, those images
of death. My grandmother marveled
at the dog poised by a boy's feet, waiting
to leap. The boy had a sword beneath his cloak,
half concealed by the wonder of green paint
not gone enough to be less than a coat.

My uncle wondered at the altarpiece,
the window glass, the carved silence
of stones that had travelled an ocean
to meet his eyes. He asked me what
these things could mean. I told him
that is what I spend my endless days
trying to figure out. Meanwhile,

Julie's gaze caught the hem of a lady's smile
frozen until the time before us, that moment.

“Too morbid," my grandmother said, and left
the room. I followed, drifting through memory
to the statue of a man at the entrance.
St. Roche, with a dog, patron of the plagued.

[This poem appeared in Divine Dirt Quarterly]