LA BELLA

Have you met her? You may tonight on your giant Web. A version of her, at least, edited by spiders who tore and embroidered, careless of design.

Search for The Beautiful Alda at Sacra di San Michele. You’ll find a girl chased by soldiers bent on assault.

She sought refuge in the Abbey anchored atop Mount Pirchiriano and clouds dizzy as she—

—running past fortress walls, up the Staircase of Dead where monk skeletons lay in niches, out the Zodiac Door carved with regnant stars, up, up to the Tower now given her name, where boots and arms stretched.

No escape left, she leapt off that peak into chasm, fog threaded with blue overlooking Alps, valley, home, and closer, another last bed waiting.

But two angels flew between her arrow and its certain end, caught and wafted her to ground.

This story has a finale which has become the fable entire, the point, sharper than arrow deflected.

It claims that Alda boasted of her rescue, that when villagers mocked in disbelief, she shouted, “I’ll show you!” and jumped again. And that no wings rushed this time to float such foolish pride.

What are the lost chapters shredded like Web, like her?

I dreamt—

When Alda fled from soldiers, she screamed for help, pounded at doors of monks’ cells, begging to be let in. But monks don’t admit women. And these Brothers didn’t. After her second leap, they made death a lesson; God will not be tested.

Yet they were. Those deaf to her pleas, without pity for her dust and blood, began to see things. Feel. Ashes thick in water they choked to drink. Mold growing on meat as they chewed it, on their limbs turned stiff. Hands stripping the crucifix from their necks, moving the Holy Host beyond their thrust tongues.

I dreamt—

These monks dreamt, too, of a girl’s cries. A babe’s. A woman’s, in their mothers’ voices. Shrieks rose, crashed into their waking.

Skeletons departed the stairway niches, entered barred chambers, yanked at robes, dragged them up, up steps built of bones, cold feet stumbling into open-mouthed skulls, until they met her Tower’s edge where in the guilty darkest hours, the guiltiest succumbed, akin to rabid soldiers who dived even quicker into swords.

Mine is just a dream, I’m told, by friends who guard my peace.

History does record the Abbey shed monks. Only three remained there by 1622. And legend preserves my title, which all about me affirm: The Beautiful, not The Fool.

But I’ve also been shown—no dream—that truth flies in spaces.

Between too much pride    and too much faith, an angel's miss       and catch.
What's too late                   and what isn't, when Eternity never knows "late."

Between abandoned
                                                  and saved.