A Perpetual Stranger

Somehow I identify with the man at the table
in a little cafe in Venice, in a picture
ten years old. It is not the suit he wears,
or the glossy black shoes. No, I am a jeans
and flannel kind of guy.
And it is not the newspaper, in Italian
which I cannot read. Besides I get my
New York Times on a plastic tablet.

It is his sense of ease. You can tell
he is home and fully comfortable in his world.
It is the fact that I was made for cafe life
more than the life I am in. Made for narrow passages
where every one of them ends at the sea.

This is why I took the photograph.
Not for the scenery, but for that man
and his simple sureness
that I have always sought,
and rarely felt, except in far away places,
a perpetual stranger.

About this poem

The picture was taken in Venice, a decade ago. I take zillions of pictures when I travel. But only a few have poems in them. This one has always had a poem or few in it.

Tom