I wish I could have been the one
to take her order,
to deliver on a silver tray the iced coffee
she now stirs with a slow spoon,
though I would settle for being the cold April wind
across the Piazza San Marco
that turns her jacket collar up
and fans her hair about her face.
She doesn’t mind, notices the wind
less than she does the waiter,
no more than her downcast eyes
observe the tourists, pigeons, louring sky.
No one else sits outdoors today
before the storied Florian,
whose Martini chairs and tables drift
in a stone sea behind her
with the ghosts of Byron and Henry James
(who would, I think, enjoy her,
each, of course, in his own way).
A copy of the Herald Tribune lies folded
in the chair beside her.
Perhaps she follows a ball club
somewhere in the American Midwest,
or owns stock, or has a concern for Aldo Moro.
Possibly she desires only
the shape of her own words,
the voices they recall.
She sips her coffee,
thumbs a Michelin Green Guide
for the chance to describe for her
Titian madonnas and old monasteries,
to direct her through the twisted streets
that all lead to where she sits,
to tell her stories of the Bridge of Sighs
(though again, I’d willingly settle
for being her glass of iced coffee,
or her wind-tossed jacket, or that long, dark hair
seeking the attention of her downcast eyes).