Saint Francesca of Assisi

"For God's sake don't tell them about the bear,"
I cautioned her. Gerta Sautalouma looked up
At me with shocked, uncomprehending eyes,
Like those of a puppy that had just been scolded.
Admitting that need had finally vanquished pride,
She'd written a plea for help to Social Services.
She's received her reply. Two caseworkers were
To visit her home to assess her situation.

She'd just told me of the bear that she feeds apples to.
It lumbers up to her, tame as one of her dogs.
I'd met her today at the end of her long driveway
That nature was reclaiming with scrubby poplar,
Weeds and knee-deep grass between the ruts.
Every week I'd haul boxes of bones and suet out to her
And help the gentle, plump-faced Finnish woman,
Dressed in a flannel shirt and overalls, to load her sled.

"What would the bureaucrats make of her?" I wondered.
Pillars of stacked newspapers and sheet-covered ghosts
Of furniture past have conspired to compress her house
Into a labyrinth of narrows and hands and knees trails.
Gerta Sautalouma had gone without for too long
To let go of anything now. Latticed with cobwebs,
Cardboard boxes still wait stacked in the living room
For the packing that she could never bring herself to do.

A box of toys in the corner and a bat and glove by the door
Conjure up images of her twelve year old boy.
His blonde hair used to glisten in the morning sun
As he would dash down the driveway to meet the bus.
The dust-covered smoking stand, the leather easy chair
That oozes a trail of stuffing toward a mouse nest,
And the moth-ravaged clothing in an upstairs closet,
To her, they're holy relics of her late husband.

She lives in the woodstove warmth of her sauna now.
Often, lying alone in the silence of the night,
Her memories will limp on back to better times,
Her life before the accident that took her two men from her
And left her to run their grocery store, alone.
She'd failed, letting it slip through her toil-gnarled hands.
Hard-working and honest herself, she'd dispensed credit
To anyone who'd ask for it. After all, she trusted folks. Then.

The day the store was auctioned off she fled in tears.
When people hurt they cope with their pain in different ways.
Some coil into a hissing rage of brooding venom
And strike out at anyone who comes too near them.
Some can shake hurt from themselves like a dog does the rain,
While some flee from those who have hurt them, as did Gerta.
She took refuge in her home like a battered child
Who hides in the closet to escape drunken blows and curses.

Bones lay scattered about her yard and driveway,
Brittle bleaching remnants of life, giving her land
The appearance of an ancient battlefield.
Last fall Constable Toivo paid her a visit.
Knowing that she did without to feed her dogs, he donned the Law
To mask his mercy and growled "Your dogs were chasing deer."
Ignoring pleas that would've softened Herod's heart
He gave lead dispatch to all but two of her companions.

Late that winter she told me, her lined, ruddy face
Livid with pain, anger and outraged disgust
Of the heartless animals that had abandoned
A box of puppies at the end of her driveway
In sub-zero cold. "Three of them had frozen to death,"
She said mournfully, "but I managed to save the two
That were huddled in the middle." Less than a year now
Since Toivo's slaughter and she was back up to ten dogs.

"I just told them to leave me alone," she said,
Her voice quivering with indignation.
"I just told them that I didn't want their help."
The social workers, aghast at the living conditions
That had embraced her existance had tried to pry her
From her home, but she ran them off with her pitchfork.
"If I don't ask them for anything, anymore," she boasted,
"They can't hurt me. They'll have to leave me alone."

As she turned from me to pull her sled's burden
Of old bones down a rut of her driveway,
The fiery leaves of early autumn
Framed her bowed, kerchiefed peasant figure
In a blazing panorama of color.
Her canine disciples padded silently beside her.
She was St.Francesca of Assisi, surrounded
By the adoration of God's guileless creatures.