Campana
Diamond contact of mallet to metal,
a single church bell breaks the dark morning
into bronze bits, the greening evening
into one hundred lemon pieces,
and the house is lit bright
by sound.
Strikes diminish to nudges so gentle
the breeze snatches them
from the oval windows of my ears
before they can slide down
the helix banisters waiting inside.
I pretend to hear the fading quavers, follow
them out the door into the quicksilver valley,
until I’m counting only heartbeats
In the bottomland.
I imagine the striking one, trudging
up spiral stairs or leaping them
three at a time, reaching
for the wooden mallet, releasing
the one-note song of a one-legged girl
in a flared skirt embellished with scallop shells,
who vanquishes tempests, cleans the unclean,
and with the clang of her heavy metal,
dispels demons.
All vapor and mineral under the corbels,
blind chime of a 15th century bell,
from campanile to loggia to grottos to girls
in the gladiola fields, to ants
in the underbellies of bluebells,
to bees in the umbels of onion and dill,
then traveling underground to knell,
half-muffled, a soul’s
journey home.
Hung dead they call it, fixed
to a headstock without lever, wheel,
or rope for swinging. Hung dead
until reincarnated by a hammer held
in the hollow of a callused hand,
it wakes, singing its bell-metal prayer
from shoulder to waist, through lip
and out a surprised round mouth—
now now now this ring this one