1.

through me, you first fell into the flat heat  of  florence summer. I held

you in the mornings and late afternoons.  Your father studied physics and the theories

of vibrating strings.  Behind his booming sonatas,  I became like the hills, that silent surrounding.

2.

I was  seventeen in the lemon grove with

you,  I remember warm

grass  and looking  up at the web

of branches above you, the movement

of celestial bodies

all dim light on my back

3.

When I was six we walked and walked and walked in the evenings and you told me about Kepler and Copernicus

and the details of planetary rotations. You drew diagrams of a heliocentric universe in the dirt. You said that

I was born of sinful fornication so no one would marry me. So I take the veil. Rename myself Sister Maria Celeste.