If Nostalgia were religion
By
Deirdre Maultsaid
Originally published in Contemporary Verse 2: 33(3), 2011
//I would return to that time,
to see my mother, a giddy señora,
holding aloft a baked globe of rare black clay,
standing among bowls all tilted to her kind of heaven,
my brother and sister duned up, wan and thirsty, under the cactus,
my mother’s own black hair, dusty,
her hands honouring a craft
as she always honoured and adorned it.
My mother pointing to a yellow bird in a cage
trilled “high up in banana tree”
so the song was a skirl in my mind.
Oh, so this is joy—
its silly lady heart,
its canary beauty, Continue reading →