FOR
AN ALBUM
Allow the backward camera
of the mind
to fill mind’s empty
spaces. He remembers
the many shifts of light
on the canals,
San Marco’s many doves,
the sudden ‘Hi!’
when almost shockingly a
friend from home
tapped on his shoulder;
the unsurprising
miracles of gold and blue
mosaics;
but most of all a deep
sense of arrival!
The dust of travel, the
taste of raw Chianti,
the new acquaintances on
lukewarm nights
—untouched by later
sense and modern faces—
have all the clarity mere
photographs
emulsify and blur. For
memory,
fracturing, reflects
enough what went deep.
Essentially those times,
many there have been,
that rearranged a part of
what he was.
Piazza, paved.
Foreshortened, refracting time.
That episode in Venice
more than most
lights up new channels
for his stagnant walls.
‘I could have stayed
for ever,’ he thinks now.
But who was she I cannot
make appear?
