– dedicated to Amy Clampitt
I suppose him in Rome, a body ruptured
and wild with grief, on a day that gives
rise to adoration and makes us thankful
for life and forgetful of our fall, wanting
to capture the beauty and promise of this
world and take in a morning sky of pear-
blossom pink and vellum blue and the
melodic chorus of birds clearing slumber
from their throats from somewhere beyond
the prattle of the piazza’s fountain and
forgive me for wondering if he, in such
moments of fierce stillness, could see
how this city appears both a portal to
the past and the afterlife and has seamlessly
fused itself to one and the other or even
if he, in wakeful anguish, might have
considered the grandeur of clouds such
as these, sulfur-struck and illuminated
from within, hung high above the
paired towers like an opulent baptistery
of pearl placed so much closer to God
and so very different than the small,
cheerless room that still holds
pieces of his life where, specter-thin
and sick for home, he wished what
remained of himself out of his body
and the sad majesty of his final days
consumed with the distance between
this life’s high requiem and the
louder silence he feared might follow.
Previously published in Freshwater Literary Journal
