A Genteel Decay

A Tuscan red. A few bricks exposed.
Round medallions signal the building’s need
to be righted, squared.
A geranium in every window to draw your eye
from a genteel decay.

From the window you can see the canal
and a building not unlike your own.
Exotically undone. Exotically preserved
just enough to be picturesque.

This is your home.
It was home before you ever set foot
on the narrow streets or sipped cappuccino
in its plentiful cafes.
A home of imagination and books,
Shadows and light and color.
Daydreams. Often as strong as life.

It was home the day you set foot
and wound your way to the tiny hotel
a five-minute meandering from San Marco’s Square.
It was, impossibly, everything your daydreams believed.
Something that has happened only once,
when falling in love. Hopelessly home.

And all the years since? It remains home,
calling me. The tourist list long behind you,
the memories of staying long enough
that this exotic mix of decay and restoration
feels perfect. Your life in architecture.
Your soul in the ebb and flow of tides,
filled with echoes of footsteps
in places where souls wait for heaven,
even as they live there, home
to the wanderer who has no map.

About this poem

Venice on my mind this morning. Love on my mind this morning. A perfect antidote to a morning melancholy. The picture of course, came from there. Some day I will go back.

A poem about a life spent rarely feeling you were home, except in Venice, and at times, when in love. A poem about aging. Poetry is never about one thing.

Tom