Not my first time overnight in an airport hotel
in a foreign country. A pre-dawn flight out means
I kill time walking cobblestone streets. The town
in riposo so I enter other spaces—
the shadows of shutter-dressed apartments,
garbage cans sunstruck and weighty on curbs,
surprisingly, inside the local cemetery
Here, photographs adorn above-ground graves.
I leave and think ironically
Nothing much to do here but live.
I, a passerby, a temporary fixture,
never to return again, will sleep worry-free
in my soundproof room tonight.
When asked about my trip I will go on
and on about the cathedrals, castles, villas, and museums,
the pastas, cheeses, and wines. And yet,
my quiet neighborhood walk amid white stucco,
red roofs, unfamiliar trees, and the sound of the local
church bells ringing, that’s a memory I like too—
and the Italian cat on the windowsill closing her eyes to the sun.
Published in Hitchlit Review