In a Small Italian Town

Brown water laps against stone.
Rats scurry in and out of my lanky legs.
I could be the biggest rat of all.
I sip cafe nero at an outside table.
The one who served me is already dead.
The piazza behind me is strangely deserted.
Not even the pigeons have been by.
My guess is the plague has been through.
The one pale face in the upstairs window
reckons I must be that plague.

A Rare Beauty

Nothing to do with work
or purpose or progress,
it lifts your feelings out
of the rest of you,
a torrent of irrational bliss,
that solves no problems,
pays no bills,
merely awakens
a supreme selfishness
that ignores all else,
reduces the world
to another’s occupying
of her surrounds,
free of all other purpose
but to simply be,
like a rose in a garden
while others die of cancer,
or a dazzling rainbow
over a village
razed by plague,
images so lovely, so dazzling,
that the cancer
eats its heart out
and the plague
spreads to all of us
but one.