Ingresso

Even without the guide, you understand the word,
hand-painted on twelve-foot-high doors. Ingresso.
Enter. A word that can be instruction, invitation or command,
all depend on place and time
and who speaks and who is listening
and what they believe their station in life might be.

Words are like that. Purportedly created to communicate,
they are defined by a dance
between speaker and listener, reader and writer
and two histories that are largely unknown
to the other. An agreement to pretend
we understand. An agreement
to live with just enough misunderstanding
to make life interesting,
as we live in a world more foreign than we know.

About this poem.

I am constantly amazed at how those around me hear words differently than I do, differently than I thought I was writing them. For a man who makes much of his living with words, it is a wonderment. Inspired by my recent trip and two and a half weeks of listening to languages different than my own.

The photograph was taken in the Ducal Palace in Venice.

Be well. Travel wisely

Tom