my father’s collection of rosary beads–gathered over
the decades from his years in the war, from marriages,
baptisms, some deaths, and then others. Nearly the entire family,
represented in the lidded crystal jar filled with flimsy silver chains,
a glisten of beads, brown, white, cylindrical. Pinkish
specks and intertwined crucifixes, a loose dozen
sending red and blue glints bouncing off the jar’s rim
like the glow around the planet I watched
from the hallway’s windows before dawn today,
merely hours after his death waiting, waiting.
Isn’t it amazing how much is visible
to the naked eye in such deep darkness?
I wasn’t thinking about mourning—
only watching the planet. It was either Saturn or Mars,
I’m never really certain, only mesmerized, seeing it
caught up in its own pulsing atmosphere. Its offering
of blue, red, and white light
issuing forth like a deep space blessing.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 1.
J. A. Lagana is a writer and poet from Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Naugatuck River Review, the Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a founding co-editor of River Heron Review. Visit her at jlagana.com and on Twitter at @lylacmuse.
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