Lines to Gregory Corso
Protestant Cemetery , Rome

Taking a photo of Shelley's shrine,

I notice you on the ground

in a square of marble, asleep

among little beards of grass.

Genuflecting there, surprised,

I imagine your bones beneath, 

with one hand raised in greeting, or

your skeletal arms linked with Shelley's

in some subversive subterranean pact,

with Keats looking on from the next quadrant.

A Roman pilgrimage brought

my aching feet to your resting place,

to read your verse of sorts, shorter

and more wistful than the rest,

shawled in silent ivy,

fingered by a sprig of blue wisteria

no bigger than a cigarette butt.

Did you think of joining your mother,

who left you as a baby on the Lower East Side

to seek these ancient temperate hills,

or was it simply your last wish to recline

near the one who flew like a skylark

into the west wind?

Let the Tiber remind me

of all your quirky songs

shrouded in cigarette smoke,

the odd fragmented verses

rendered stoned and eloquent

from the sofas of friends.

In Rome

I swim like a fish

through vowels bubbling

in the fountains of Villa Borghese.

My tongue grows consonants,

coins in Neptune 's bath, my lips

become fins in the Trevi.

I hear the lions

coming for me at the Colosseum--

they can smell my blood.

On one of the seven hills,

I look down on the domes

and feel their ochre gild my skin.

Tomorrow, in Chicago ,

my mouth will turn to stone.

I'll wear the borrowed robes

of Santa Teresa, her eternal spell

rising through centuries, caught in marble

by a sweating Bernini.

Letter from Italy

Last night at Trevi Fountain,

four deep take photos:

lovers pose before mammoth

marble. Nearby,

a priest at Santa Maria della Vittoria

drones the rosary, the chanting

of veiled women hiding Santa Teresa's

ecstasy, her wild stone robes.

Night brings souvenir-sellers

spreading leather and scarves

on sheeted cobblestones until

blue lights signal police.

A full moon spells memories

of Cousin Rosetta's kitchen,

six hours south, where the family

gathers for pasta and eggplant,

local cheeses, miraculous meats.

Crossword puzzles in Italian and English

pepper the night with random words.

Our foreign tongues peck the air

like sparrows hungry for seed,

echo over laundry on the balcony,

fall like sweet figs from Tonino's tree,

ready for eating.

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© Copyright, 2014,Donna Pucciani.All Rights Reserved.