Poem-A-Day April 21: Unaccompanied

Venice, Unaccompanied

Waking
on the train, I thought
we were attacked

          by light:
chrome-winged birds
hatching from the lagoon.

          That first day
the buoys were all
that made the harbor

          bearable:
pennies sewn into a hemline.
Later I learned to live in it,

          to walk
through the alien city—
a beekeeper’s habit—

          with fierce light
clinging to my head and hands.
Treated as gently as every

          other guest—
each house’s barbed antennae
trawling for any kind

          of weather—
still I sobbed in a glass box
on an unswept street

          with the last
few lire ticking like fleas
off my phonecard I’m sorry

          I can’t
stand this, which
one of us do you love?

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