by Michele Bombardier
My friend is in the hospital again.
I tell him the latest with my son,
his godchild, and he tells me to pray
to Saint Rita, patron of impossible causes.
He says his flotilla of specialists
don’t agree why the river within him
jumps its bank, how his test results
read like a weather warning:
pressure dropping, storm heading
north, increased outages.
Rita can cure us, he says, she’s good
with family feuds or, in his case,
blood clots, biopsies. She heals folks
like us, adrift in rising waters
whether the high seas of our own bodies
or the waterways of family.
Rita, also the unofficial saint of baseball,
that sport for the lonely and afflicted
and the incurable optimist
with its endless quest for home
and being called safe. White bees
were said to swarm Rita as an infant.
They left her unharmed as they crawled
in and out of her mouth and nose.
Safety is a state of mind, my friend says.
We’re more raft than boat, rickety,
rudderless. All of it dangerous. No matter
where you are, he says, you’re going home.
::
Michele Bombardier is the 2024 winner of the NORward Prize. Her collection, What We Do, was a Washington Book Award finalist. Her work can be found in Atlanta Review, JAMA, Crab Creek Review and many others. She has received support from Hedgebrook, The Tyrone =Guthrie Centre, and Humanities Washington. She is the founder of Fishplate Poetry and the inaugural poet laureate of Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Image: Pedro Fresquis. “Saint Rita of Cascia (Santa Rita de Cascia).” 1815. In the Public Domain.
ID: Painting of Saint Rita carrying a crucifix, rosary, and small skull.
Psaltery & Lyre 