“Coming Back” by Beverly LaFontaine
The rosemary thirsts. The brown rice is mealy.
A spider spins a universe between a leg of the piano
and a shadowed corner of the living room.
Get sick, stay in bed and that’s what happens.
You become a ghost in your own life.
Bits of me are floating back like moons to their
mother planet. No one else has this exact memory
of honey on toast or this bitter echo of a child lost.
I water the rosemary, sweep away cobwebs, let light and sound
stitch my wounds, healing across time and space.
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Beverly LaFontaine is a Los Angeles-born poet and playwright. As a collaborative artist she has worked with composer Tom Flaherty to create The Cellist of Sarajevo, a chamber music piece. She was commissioned to create six poems that were incorporated into the sculptural work of Walk a Mile in My Shoes, a public art project dedicated to Martin Luther King and sponsored by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Believing as she does that the arts articulate societies’ most deeply held and cherished beliefs and aspirations, Beverly served as an arts administrator for three decades. On “Coming Back” she shared, “After months of surgery, chemo and radiation, I was truly thankful to return to a life outside of my body and its demands.”
