Damp mortar and stone. Dark like a cave
was mass that day. Not Catholic, I went
with Jane. Spoken in Italian though I knew
none, nor did she. Santa Croce, the church’s home
once in marsh, just months after the Arno flood.
Huge fans roared in the corners. Up and down 
Jane on the kneeler. Drapes of hunger cloths 
for holy week. My gut unsettled from strong coffee, 
no breakfast. Priests clanging incense sensors, cloaking 
mildew but not entirely. Bread offered I would not taste. 
Others there that day? Mostly gray and hunched. 
Our hair pinned down with white lace picked up
at a stall on the street. Franciscan – my brain
searches for the image of a stone man in robes 
holding a bird. Pigeon? Dove? I smell the marsh 
working to reclaim stone. Fans whining louder 
than prayer. Remnants of grief, mud and dove.
                        

Would-be fools assemble
to tell tall-tales and lies
perhaps meaning to be funny.
The dog has enough smarts
 
to lay on a patch of stone in sun. 
The ice is in retreat, not gone,
and where the snowplow scattered
sand and gravel, we crunch
 
toward the mailbox’s day 
of ads for lily bulbs, summer
camps, and recent local votes
on a promise of change.
                        

Hope to be homed out of harm’s
way and the holes of mice. 
Give it your all 
when rain and wind 
flay you
to a black-eye center. 
 
Do not take yourself too seriously -
we come to an end 
where what’s left is a tri-corn hat
on sticks that go to black. 
 
Much that is clean and good and lush
falls to base below, 
rainbow skirts wait
to rise again
no matter how hard this hurt.