A Changed Heart

The day his youngest son was born
with a hole in his heart
my grandfather made a novena.

As a child I was told the cruel history:
how he poured hot soup over my
grandmother’s head,
chained his sons in the garage to a coal stove,
made them go without food,
would not allow children to talk at the dinner table,
slapped them across the head if they did.

As an adult I faced his hilly garden,
admired the ascending rows of
peppers, garlics, tomatoes, onions, grape vines.

Pointing to a plant I did not recognize
he motioned me to a shed
where rows and rows of unfamiliar
leaves hung on string,
the aroma making them known to me.
He pulled one large leaf down,
crinkled it between his plump fingers,
deftly rolled a cigar,
lit a match;
it smelled like home to me.

We descended the cellar stairs of that
house he had built with those dangerous hands,
where his casks of wine lined the stone walls.

There was no cruelty in that hand
that passed me a glass.

“A Changed Heart” previously appeared in A Perfect World by One Spirit Press, Cholla Needles, and Academy of the Heart and Mind.

Japanese Vase

For sixty years it moved with us,
that Satsuma vase.
Other object disappeared over the years,
but the vase was always there,
the original design brought by Korean potters
to Japan in the early 1600s
to the island of Kyushu.

It fell once,
surviving a clean break.
Mom glued it back together.
She believed it worth something,
held this vase in awe:
the Japanese man and woman
in feudal dress,
bold colors of red, blue, orange,
the backdrop a seascape
an island in the distance,
a three clawed dragon wraps
the circumference,
flamboyant figures in enamel
outlined in gold against chocolate
and white dotted moriage.

I can’t remember when
we didn’t own this vase
Mother purchased at auction.
When she died it became mine.
It would have been the perfect
place for her ashes, but there
is no stopper or lid.
She is there though
all the same.

“Japanese Vase” was first published in Plainsongs and appears in A Perfect World published by One Spirit Press.

D. Marie Fitzgerald is a retired English and creative writing instructor. She is the author of six collections, and her work has appeared in several publications, most recently Down in the Dirt, Cholla Needles, and Academy of the Heart and Mind. She currently hosts a monthly featured readers series in Palm Springs, California and runs a poetry critique group.