Venice

The painting brings it all back.
The narrow streets, the water,
the sense of history and decay.
the market with fish so fresh they still dance,
the chapels and cathedrals,
the damp moss clinging to steps,
the cafes and cappicino,
art and artists and music. stone walkways
and deliveries to shops on carts piled high
and pulled along by young men improbably attractive,
the women young and old in perfect leather heels,
the tiny shops, the gondola drivers singing
“Amazing Grace” in the afternoon doldrums.

A week. That is all the time your body spent there,
but your soul? It never left.
It never will.

About this poem

If I could live anywhere. It would be Venice. It captivated my imagination for decades, and captured my heart in the single week I stayed there.

The painting is by Renoir.

Tom