Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Pexels.com
To Villa Pamphili
Start running
from the door
up the steps
urine smell
of cats
to the corner.
Garbage
spills to gutters
and the sidewalks
stain with grease.
Run past the curb
to the other,
up the pavement
to the station
where the boxer
growing old,
and now retired
pumps his gas,
flatters men
he doesn’t like
yet bows a formal
“Ciao!”
to a woman
running forward
wanting back
all the body
she once had.
Rhythm though
monotonous,
she knows she
must stay with it,
jog to find
an equili-
brium and make it
past the stores
with their trinkets,
and the cars
buzz like gnats,
shrill her ears,
fill her lungs
with veils of fumes.
Buses
packed with bodies,
bunched up stems,
bouquets
of stinking weeds.
And run
past the church
that is empty
always empty
save for hefty
black-shawled
rosaried women,
stub hair back,
short.
Stockings
slide in shoes
worn from shopping,
cooking, cleaning,
stooping, taking
care to serve.
Hurry
to the villa
up ahead.
Walls
shot with holes
of cannonballs
from the time of Garibaldi.
Outside.
That’s the outside.
And the ramp
will take her inside
Enter
through the portal.
Jog
to the open, to the garden
that has been here while she was running.
Feel the pulse receding as she leaves what’s
outside, slowing breathing, walking over bones sedate
in their rest, birds, squirrels, chipmunks.
Water flows over rocks, obedient to no
force but their own. She lies down with them.
