Swirl

Swirl 24 x 18 cm - collage/acrylic on canvas board

BARDIC RECOLLECTIONS

Maybe we should permit

memory to make us stand

up on our hind legs and bark

for a treat, e.g., thought I was being

funny and asked my doctor to prescribe

a pizza but none of that deep

dish Yankee crap, only slices of

the real thing would do, a chewy sour-dough

crust enriched by squirts of virgin olive oil

pressed out in the hills behind Ventimiglia.

That was the trigger. You and I had some

face time in those hills or further down

the boot, in Camogli, I think, fire flies in the wood

near the Ristorante, Pavarotti’s creamy voice

drifting in from the kitchen along with

two plates of ravioli in walnut sauce. I know

it sounds too good to be true

or too bildungsbürgertumlich to be good

but I can top that: after Dolce and espresso

we could hear a nightingale’s solo and I swear

there was Shelley heading out to the sea

that would kill him, Keats already dead and

Byron lifting Shelly’s heart from the fire

in which they burned his body on the beach

then I automatically stopped barking and nurse Anna

handed me my prescription for blood pressure pills.