Unfinished Venice
It’s texture.
It’s the light reflected
off the brackish canal water
into clerestory sills.
Never stilled.
It’s the languid air,
when the wind dies down,
hazy with dread and the silt
of plunder, religion, and glass.
It’s found shade,
a moving target
as ice hits the glass
and the afternoon loses its edges.
Bitter, sweet, and bubbles
cast their own shadows.
It’s the uneven joining of the cobbles
in a bricolage,
early morning markets
playing a concert of seasons
with bacaro and taverna
as the rhythm section.
It’s small bites on toast
of creamy bacalao,
the juicy polpette,
the cannochie—
a shrimp so sweet and clear,
that they only need to be kissed by fire
and spritzed with olive oil
to transform into a red, pink, and orange swirl,
imbued with the woodsmoke.
A fitting parallel to the art of walking this labyrinth.
It’s stumbling into the grungy enoteca,
reeling in the evening,
and having a shot of something local and bitter,
with our new friends when you went to the bathroom.
It’s like us,
a memory of beautiful thing,
The only difference is that Venice is unfinished.
