San Marco

I thought this was my first published poem, but looking again at the dates it appears to be the third after "Night Driving/Blue Moon" and "Estate Sales." No arguing with history. Maybe it was the first accepted. Wrote it, I know, in 1995, after spending a few short weeks in Italy after Liz finished at Michigan. Somewhere I think I even have a picture of those mosaiced birds.

photo by Dimitry B

San Marco

On the ceiling of San Marco's cathedral in Venice
two birds have inexplicably escaped from  the ark
mosaics in the other dome, a scattering of Genesis
loose in the city, or perhaps two wading birds

who have come in through the front doors
to be trapped in gold tiling by workmen. Storks
of some kind, or cranes. Odd of course that seabirds
might book passage on a boat. Not untoward

to ask, is it? Our Italian fades into Latin and then
into nothingness: Cette due aves, est...?
Let some mysteries rest.
                                      Meanwhile the screens
are up to keep out the now more famed pigeons,

memorialized daily in the shrieks of children
joyfully alarmed by whirling grey feathers
and beaks reaching for millet. Their fathers laugh
abashed, take photographs and years later

are unable to explain to neighbors why a
snapshot of a child in Venice reminds them of life
escaping unobserved from behind a half-open door.

(Published in Cold Mountain Review Vol. 26 No. 2, Spring 1998)