As when I slipped, and you took my arm?
I was laughing since I might have slipped badly
On the white stone, the slick white stone
Edging the step, and every step like it
On all the small bridges over the canals
In Venice.  No, I agreed with you, soberly,
It would not be good if I fell. To wind up
In the hospital in Venice, when, yes,
I had just escaped the hospital at home.

Where it was colder than this, with snow
There, although it was cold then in Venice too.
Rain. Our first days of January:  watermarked.
Or there was cold fog over the lagoon, so
The columns of St. Mark’s rose into the whiteness.

Although we were stubbornly cold to the bone
With no heat on—to spare buying the least gas
From the Russians. Although the news from
Ukraine remained unrelentingly horrible. With
Only a hot plate and a small box of a refrigerator
That froze up unless we unplugged it regularly.
Since you were by then adept at boiling pasta
In the microwave.  Although the wi-fi was
Spotty, only available at the single window.

I learnt to make coffee in the wasp-waisted
Metal steamer. Since we walked daily out of 
That dark place, all over the island and
The outlying islands, to Lido.  We kept warm, 
Even in the cemetery. No, I had never been happier

To see you—to have seen you navigate the wild.

					For Dr. Ruffin White
					January-May 2023
                        

In the ruts of the crushed-cinder switchbacks, puddles all the way up
To the top. More at the foot of a blackened angel, and at
The foot of a polished urn the size and shape of a grown woman,
 
Her name, Pyle, etched into the granite. Plastic flowers, the American
Flags and bronze markers of service to the Un-Serene Republic stand 
In the rain.  Fog off the river obscures any promised view of the city
 
Which, today, on the first of May, is easily as cold as I remember
Venice was in January, and easily as foggy and rainy and stony.
Martins Ferry is an inland Mestre, another Venice without its decayed
 
Concupiscences, its trappings of wealth, and serenity. The rain
Already hangs a grey shawl in front of the blue domes of the Ohio 
Greek Orthodox church, standing cheek by jowl by an industrial dairy.
 
At the one Russian Orthodox brick cathedral in Venice, marked
With a plaque in Cyrillic, we stopped in the rain, when we found it. 
James Wright stood here, maybe in the rain, and got out of it. 

					For Michael and Eva Simms
					May 1, 2023