Some days, I am capable
only of caring about my new chestnut-colored shoes
with the red laces, which in Italy
seem demure, but in Minnesota
will give off the faint whiff
of a clown gone overboard, drowning
in his own ridiculous sea.
The young Americans arrive,
backpacks and loud voices,
such excitement
at being Elsewhere. “I miss my mother,”
I hear one say to another,
standing at a railing from which you can see
darkness coming from miles away
across the valley, the same darkness
you will be given to call your own
after your own mother is gone.
In the café yesterday,
the one that looks out on the ruins
of the old amphitheater,
I was in the middle of reading
yet another poem about death
when I looked up. A man was standing there
hand open, silently hoping
I might give.
He stared straight at me,
the brown skin of his palm like a blind eye
looking out at nothing.
I shook my head no
and went back to my book, death
returning to death.