photo of Mauseturm by juligrinsekatze for pixabay
Tracks zipper the earth
on both shores.
Trains float along the valley walls.
You spill from the slingshot
of two rivers, Bingen.
Church bells tip and nod
across the vineyards.
Cat of a town.
Eight times destroyed,
a ninth rebuilt.
Bombs still lie tucked
beneath your skin.
History’s ticks.
900 years of Hildegard itches
at your foundations.
Do you miss her?
Does the abbess ever come by?
Does she come at night
when the Rhine
wraps its wet sleeves
around the Mäuseturm?
Does she come at Christmas
or Easter when
the churches fill?
Or in fog, when ships propel
themselves around
that tricky bend?
Does she come through the woods
at Bingerbrück?
What would she tell us, now?
What would we hear?
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I love this! Glorious and subtle, Hildegard’s presence evoked.
Thanks for the image of the water flowing in the river, the wet sleeves. I think they remember.
I love the tracks as zippers, the floating trains, bells that tip and nod and how the Rhine wraps its wet sleeves about the Mauseturm and Hildegard could tell us so much. Your speaker chose a remarkable woman to tell about and her questions are apropos: what would she tell, what would we hear, would we hear anything at all?
Wonderful opening line, Katy. And those bells that tip and nod seemed, even at first reading, to be central to the poem, a feeling confirmed at the end: what would we hear? Thank you for this beauty of a poem.