Firenze

Scooters buzz along mountain-paved streets,
burnt earth from Sienna colours its walls,
centuries spill as dust through their cracks.

There are liquid, medieval faces and
dark skinned signorine who chatter by
aflame in the shade of long-legged American girls.

In the baptistery dark men, Titian women
chant in stifling air as geometric sygils
dance on whitewashed walls.

The Arno, rippled and pierced by thick-armed men
who scull silently by in long thin boats
skimming trout gathering at the weir.

Scrubbed steps worn by centuries of shoes
tumble into old shops piled high along the edge
of the stones and cobbles that are the Ponte Vecchio.

We sit and drink from espresso-wetted cups
watched by Hercules and Neptune now frozen in stone.
Firenze, an old leather box, red-polished, gilded.

© Anthony Fisher may 2004