Venezia                 

I:  Grandma opens her shutters to the sun, a certain sadness settling on her heart - that tender blown glass - blue tones shade her day. Her bambinos are gone, far away. The grandchildren too - across the canal where the water doesn’t rise every winter. “Come with us,” they said, didn’t mean to leave her behind, but her husband’s memory is here and she won’t leave him.

 II: Down the Cannareggio Canal a lone boatman rows his narrow wooden shell past a broken down palazzo. I should leave he thinks, make some money. But he loves the secret places and the webbing of water, and sea birds singing with songbirds in the pine trees. Like a well-preserved mosaic Venezia is writ on his soul. He loves just standing in St. Marks in February when no one is there as the last light hits the Piazza and the Basilica’s gold ceiling comes alive like heavenly flames. Besides, he can’t quit the quiet.

 III: Across town, Grandpa shudders and spits into the canal -  the endlessly moving, circling, spinning water. He casts a quick glance at the garbage collector (a Liam Neeson lookalike) and thinks “Anytime now.”

 IV: Peggy is buried here with her dogs, eternally enjoying the shock of modern art, as we pay homage to the Guggenheim legacy. I believe she lived for the moment when the parties ended and her collection was all that was left, all that mattered.

 V: In the Doges Palace the astrological clock keeps impeccable time. Sun in Cancer now, just at the beginning. A few palazzos still shine; others career to the left or right held up only by the stability of their neighbors.

 VI: We fall asleep to gentle rocking back toward time as history ceaselessly ticks, pulls things together and apart. A clutch of old men clink Cinzanos under market umbrellas and we swim ever faster into the simplicity of vegetables on market day,fish on Fridays and Tuesdays, love when we can get it and the sun falling, bringing this city alive.

Page 3

© Copyright, Joan Gelfand.
All Rights Reserved.