Venice gripped me tight
and would not let go.
And I would be a liar
if I denied my partial role
as pimp to my own imprisonment.
She grips me tight
and my cries that she release me
ought not to be believed,
for though my pages are thick
with the inspired word,
for every burning bush I’ve seen
not one has called me, yet, by name.
The slut of Venice is my permanent alibi:
her canals encircle me
like the sapling-supple thighs
of a widow barely turned thirty.
At which remark my audience
might well expect, and perhaps deserve,
a loving wink.
The drowning man
goes grinning under
and the waves veronica his face
like a naiad’s discarded underthings.
The soft green smells
of Venice at night,
the glassy reflection
of torches splintering the water.
And here and there a trail
of briefest bubbles, the stain of oil
like a sea within a sea.
Which never fails to remind me
of the sheen of fine sweat
on the back of a sleeping girl,
where drops have almost pearled
the outline of her curves.
See how she breathes so lightly,
so profoundly untroubled
that I must touch my lips
to where her spine is duned
in snowy skin to verify,
good person that I am, that she is truly alive.
The pearls dance and shake themselves
into a sliding necklace as she turns
to ease my sweet concern
and what will inevitably follow
is both Venice
and the meaning of this world.