My wife's beloved nana
daughter of a Garibaldi
Longobard name
meaning bold spearsman
came on her own
to California
in nineeteen hundred three
from this small village
in the hills
just inland from
the Cinque Terre
and the Ligurian Sea

She was twelve then
was joining an older
half-sister in San Francisco
now all these years later
we had found the house
she'd lived in as a girl
and sure enough
just as she'd told
her grand-daughter
there was the church
up on the hill
above the house
seen front and center
through the upstairs
bedroom window

From the outside
the church was nondescript
but when we entered
for a Sunday mass
what a surprise
the walls
the entire ceiling
filled with lovely artworks
paintings of a baroque master
whose name we failed to learn

Only a handful of the faithful
attending mass that morning
but the priest intoned the Latin
with a warm resonant voice
that needed no amplification
to fill up the church with solemn
and incantatory sound

The service over
ushered to a side room
we saw books with yellowed pages
lined up on high shelf
the priest and our new friend
a local geneologist
helped us search the records
scrawled in faded ink
births, baptisms, marriages
and deaths that went back
in time before Napoleon
initiated public record keeping

Looking for family history
for names and dates connecting us
to this small village
to this church
where my wife's nana
had come as a girl
with parents, brothers, family
sat perhaps in the same pew
where we had sat
all that was deeply meaningful
though neither she nor I
confessed a Christian faith
it seemed this church
had brought the two of us
one long step closer
to the mystery
the silence
to the only god we knew