Cinque Terre, Italy

Maybe you will be there, waiting for me,

expecting me, or rather, unexpectantly. 

In one of those painted houses, 

hanging from a window, reading poetry,

putting clothes on a clothes line. 

Or on a rooftop, sipping wine, 

painting a portrait of a prostitute,

or a still life of fruit and bee.

Or maybe you're a tourist

dancing by yourself in a hotel room 

where the curtains sway in the breeze. 

It is as though the houses breathe, 

as though they're among the living

as close as they dwell to the sea. 

They make love to the coast

as old lovers make love.

The sunset became an orange ghost

haunting a faint blue distant sea

it once flaunted. 

Or maybe you are reading at a café 

and I am just minutes from you, 

puttering along on my motorbike,

a tourist like you.

You don't look up when someone passes 

because you are thoughtfully engaged

in the profundity of the book,

and not impressed by temporary shadows.

But I've yet to pass, 

and you're yet to pass me.  

In this life, anyway, we've had no intersection.

It is too soon to speak of an autopsy.

Still life left before dissection. 

Still life of an autopsy.

All that would be revealed by the dissection

are two half hearts, chipped away by unworthy lovers that never should have been. 

Those grifters from the gutters —

a murder of women, a conspiracy of men. 

Let's not ever speak of them, 

or the silly songs that they sung and sing. 

Those fleeting moonrakers, those daft rubes,

that feed on insignificant things. 

Estella, the cat, purrs in the saddlebag 

of my motorbike as I putter, 

hoping for a rat, or a mouse,

as I hope for you.

I take pictures of her in place of you,

until I meet you in this place, or another. 

Perhaps in that café, 

or on that rooftop with a bucket of beer,

or in that breezy room with a view of the sea

where we will meet and make love,

as the houses breathe, and Estella sleeps,

and prostitutes pollinate lonely weeds. 

As the houses and the abrasion coast 

of Cinque Terre make love eternal,

and the ghosts over the blackened sea

slumber as the moonrakers rake the beach

drunk on their diurnal dream.

Maybe you are there, waiting for me,

expecting me, or rather, unexpectantly. 

But wherever you are, darling, please scream. 

Abandon decorum, and scream for me.