Hard Dreams

You might expect echoes
in the long passage
with its paving stones and brick walls,

It is what you expect of hard surfaces.
Reverbaration. Reflection of sound
and yet there is a silence here

and your steps are invisible, silent
and leave no markings.
It is more comfortable than it should be,

this invisibleness. More peaceful
than your other life, and more familiar
than the proponderance of your years would believe.

You have spent maybe a month here.
A month in seventy years,
but in your mind, you are there

every day. It haunts you,
not like a ghost, but like a lover
who lives too far away,

always on your mind,
More real than your surroundings,
your day in and day out walking,

where you somehow matter
where people rush to repair the slightest
flaw in their walls.

Not here. Here the plaster peels
off brick and is left, flaws become
part of the charm, worn proudly,

like the city is saying
“I have survived this too.”,
helping you to believe

you too might survive.

There is something not quite normal
in a mind that finds home
halfway across the world,

that is able to live in the narrow passages
that somehow, always,
lead to the sea.

About this poem

Venice on my mind. Love on my mind. My own history on my mind. A gentle questioning of my own sanity, which is likely overrated.

You know where the picture was taken.

Tom