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POETRY

*BEST of mamazine.com* Camelback Road, Scottsdale, Arizona
by Rafaella Del Bourgo

Tuesday, seven a.m.
This six lane highway almost empty,
the double line down the center
white as bone.
I am running toward the small lake
near my mother's condo,
pumping my body clean
with air and speed
and coursing blood.

To the west, Camelback Mountain
pushes up out of the ground,
double humped.
At the hospital
mother lies in her
new, astonished state—
an open-eyed still life
of woman and machine.

Near the water's edge
a duck waddles toward me
with her fantail of young.
I have remembered bread
and, hands extended,
drop to my knees.


Rafaella Del Bourgo's writing has appeared in Caveat Lector, Puerto Del Sol, Rattle, and The Bitter Oleander. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2002. In 2003, her first collection of poetry, I Am Not Kissing You, was published, and she won the Lullwater Prize for Poetry. She lives with her husband and a small herd of cats in Berkeley, California.