Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

Sunset in Santa Cruz, Portugal

For my husband of 40 years

At the round end of the world the sun slipped down,

the Sky God’s arm too tired to hold it up.

We were drinking the light and red Douro wine

from globed glasses, delicate and thin

as promises made that can’t be kept.

This dream of ours, this morning’s sunrise,

all things end as they once begun,

in a blinding blaze of crazy hope

that no natural fact could dissuade us from.

Each son born like all the sons before

but different because they were yours and mine,

not subject to the same laws of time

the rest of us suffered. They were adored.

Love gathered, fermented, and poured

out into vessels that could not bear it.

We watch the light fade, pour the wine, and share it.

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, PhD, is a professor, poet, scholar, and writer at Fordham University, where she serves as Associate Director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her publications include two chapbooks and nine full-length collections of poems. Her book Holy Land (2022) won the Paraclete Press Poetry Prize. In addition, O’Donnell has published a memoir about caring for her dying mother, Mortal Blessings: A Sacramental Farewell; a book of hours based on the practical theology of Flannery O’Connor, The Province of Joy; and a biography, Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith.  Her ground-breaking critical book on Flannery O’Connor, Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor, was published by Fordham University Press in 2020. O’Donnell’s eleventh book of poems, Dear Dante, was published in Spring 2024.  She is currently at work on the manuscripts of two new collections, one tentatively titled Body Songs, poems on embodiment, and The View from Childhood, poems about family, coming of age, and the place(s) we call home.