Conchalina, My Mystery
En boca cerrada no entran moscas*
(Spanish saying)
Antoinette of the mountains,
south and west,
sculpted a figurine
I cannot comprehend.
Done in brown and white
it's crafted of mud
from the clay of Santa Fe.
And there, on a visit, I bought her.
Little Pueblo figurine,
teach me, through your crafted eyes
and mouth,
the need for silence
or for speech.
She sits there, brown
and clean-white, with legs crossed
and holding a mobile phone.
Looking upward, (mocking perhaps)
her mouth is open,
always open.
Antoinette, the artist, (in the shop)
had explained the injunction
against speaking. Yet here sits
Conchalina, her mouth open
wide. (Someone should admonish her!)
When to be silent, when to speak--
easy to miscalculate.
Conchalina, my little sculpted model,
had I attended more closely.
I might have gained
your mystery.
*Flies don't enter a closed mouth
Poems by Carole Mertz appeared in Every Day Poems, Indiana Voice Journal, Lutheran Digest, Page & Spine, Rockford Review, WPWT, WestWard Quarterly, and in various anthologies. Her poems placed first in several of Wilda Morris' Poetry Challenges. Her poetry reviews are printed in Arc Poetry Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Copperfield Review, CutBank, Mom Egg Review, and World Literature Today. Carole enjoys teaching piano to young children in Parma, Ohio.
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