Teacher says that every time a bell rings
she is awakened in the night and lies there
remembering the bay at San Sebastian.
The stars in the sky there are local,
drifting up from modest houses in Loiola.
They are as close as cats on a sill
and are able to both warm and wound.
Teacher says that when her heart beats,
she cannot sleep, recalling the day of drums--
the Tamborrada, and the clouds that gathered
in search of their pilfered thunder.
During the Aste Nagusia, or Big Week.
La Concha Bay is home to stilt walkers wearing
huge papier mâché heads. The calm waters
are like mothers who knew these giants as babies.
Teacher says that there was a man there,
or a woman, or an enchantment she cannot describe.
Perhaps all three, a trinity born of sangria, celebration,
and one bell beneath the drumbeat, a ringing bird.
On these recent nights, far from the Basque country,
she is startled by her doppelganger lying awake beside her.
The lesson she cannot teach is that neither knew of the other,
though the invitation was always there, a tongue in the bell,
Like an arrow in the flesh of a saint or an invitation
to La Concha Bay, and the days to be lived beyond it.
_________
for Word Garden Word List--The Book of the Dead.
Music: Mary Hopkin Those Were the Days
