Devotion
A strip of mulched soil skirts
the wide cement path.
A power wheelchair is parked
on the side: Empty, and no one's
on the bench nearby.
A rustling of leaves and woodchips
directs my gaze: an old man, thin,
in baggy corduroy pants, plaid shirt
and blue baseball cap kneels on the dirt,
head bowed low, propped on his left hand,
right hand busy weeding
around a plant, his knobby fingers
still nimble at the task.
A worshipper, a flower.
Simona Carini was born and grew up in Italy, where she graduated from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Milan). She moved to California as an adult and graduated from Mills College (Oakland, CA). Her poetry and memoir have appeared in a number of venues, in print and online, including Intima – A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Italian Americana, the American Journal of Nursing, and the California Writers Club Literary Review. Her food writing appears regularly in the North Coast Journal. Carini lives in Northern California and works as a data scientist at an academic research institution. https://simonacarini.com
See more of her work in 4.2 and 5.1 and 5.3 and 7.1 and 9.1