Venezia

Venezia

Venice is a rubbed painting

that reveals a lost era.

Water floods and recedes

marking its territory in deliberately carved ripples

of marble.

The terrazzo floors are sloping

the timber structures giving out

falling with five stories weight into the Adriatic.

Symphonies play in San Marco

it’s the end of the world – a last show,

to remember.

For six dollars you can stay at a table where they serve coffee or wine.

In other places

up against the canal, where there are small plazas

and most often restaurants, you can eat

an early pizza for lunch, have some wine.

.

The city is a mask of skin with hollow eyes

pull your face from the lime light

hide behind the curtains, your nose last to leave.

What’s left in the shell of the blue light?

A city of fantasy and flying creatures

vendors willing to talk in English and Italian in waves if

you make a drawn-out purchase.

Here, our seams were open to one anther – I

bartered for a scarf, my husband found a museum with French directions

yelled from a window, then

he slipped into the canal trying to make me laugh.