Holy Week
A song of degrees, of pilgrimage, as in the Psalms of David
My brothers all have died,
the boys I held when they were small,
when I was small,
the boys I fed and shoved.
Should I lie down with them and keep them warm
or step over them to live?
Or should I crawl across their bodies in pilgrimage
the way my grandmother climbed the concrete steps to the shrine
on her knees, with me one step behind her at her elbow,
her pocketbook swinging at my face
every time she took a step—
In the parlor of her apartment she had a tapestry of the Roman Colosseum
and a crucifix and a picture of Pope John the 23rd
and houseplants in coffee cans on the windowsills—
marvetta, coleus, basilico.
One year after her death at 92, I went to Rome for the first time.
It was Holy Week and all the stores were closed—chiuso, chiuso, chiuso.
I was six weeks pregnant.
At the Colosseum I kept stumbling over imaginary statuary,
petrified feet and hands in the grass.
Who died here?
I kneeled to vomit in the weeds.
Fata da forta, my grandmother used to say. Make yourself strong.
I walk around the bodies of my brothers,
arranging their limbs, tracing the contours of their faces
I will remember the clean smell of the grass that grew at the Colosseum
and in the cracks in the steps to the shrine
and I will write about it in a book.
_________________________________________________________________________
Today, April 7th, is my brother Joseph Norton's birthday. He died of AIDS in New York City on October 2, 1986. He was twenty-four. He would have been 57 if he had lived. It's also Billie Holiday's birthday. 
This poem is from my 2011 book, The Public Gardens: Poems and History. In Lent I always think of my grandmother and the crosses she'd weave from palms every year on the Sunday before Easter. And I think of my brother.
@AIDSMemorial kindly reposted my tribute to Joseph today. You may read it here. And you may visit his memorial at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, a beautiful place.
