VENICE, CAMPO SAN NICOLO' DEI MENDICOLI.

A warm winter Sunday.

Breaths in almost

suspended droplets.

Muffled silence by the church,

the Sunday silence of dampened steps,

air testing its own hazy indulgence.

I sweat after the walk. Sirocco fills me.

The swollen sky’s cheeks.

Here the city ended once,

stretched in front there was only

the lagoon expanse

in patches of sandbars.

Bare flatness

and flourishes of ripples.

And oars dipping in

and the boats’ wood whining

in the clouds maybe more than now

slow, big and palpable.

In silver grey

just after the rain.

Something merging

with the spreading forth

of a birth, the utterly strange

and the utterly familiar.

And now I know

I could perspire myself

into what’s next.