-at first sight-

when she walked through the din

of the crowded corridors she left in her wake

a polished filament of jet-stone hair and the lingering

scent of Ivory soap.

my eyes were on a level

plain with her eyes as she passed
without a glancing note of my presence,

and although I’m not tall she is taller than the girls

mulling around her;

a descendant of the formidable

Portuguese,–– bloodline of the Azores,

great granddaughter to the island fisher,

granddaughter to the wine-
grape cultivator of  São Miguel,
first daughter to the sweltering

Kerr-Thread Textile Mill's boiler-tender,––

the living romance of this olive-skinned

beauty of the Westside Projects

rising in red-brick from its authority on the banks of the Taunton.

nearing seven decades, and this historical recollection came to be penned
after reading the obituary page in the morning's newspaper, of which not a word

nor phrase from that frigid column honored Madalena Mello's memory as I have here.