Italy Post #17

Dear Readers,
As of this afternoon, I booked my train ticket to Florence! Yay! This will be the first time I'll have travelled all alone in Italy; yay? I'm pretty scared, especially since I don't speak much Italian, but the train goes directly. Also I will be traveling part of the way with two of the students who speak lots of Italian and fluent Spanish who are going to Pisa.

Things to do in Florence:
-Visit Jenny!
-look for Christmas presents, especially a cameo for JuJuFruit
-buy lots and lots of scarves
-gaze at the Arno
-visit the Boboli Gardens

Newest poem:

Beneath arches of tufa

When I recall those days of August heat,
the blind light of summer streaking through
beams of brick and stone around the patio
where I played with mud and sticks as a child,

the problem of pain and understanding sinks
beneath my realm of comprehension, losing
itself in the days and weeks and months
where walking became a tear-stained memory

and nights were tormented by muscles like scissors
tearing up my back. I didn’t want
home to be the place to rest, but there
I found myself, wrapped in the old worn

blankets of my childhood while
my mom poured her love like olive oil,
thick and rich, upon the scars and wounds
that had built up like a crust over years.

Rest never came to me there, where
love grew in the shadow of daily
life, and time was clogged with stress and school.
Bible studies were the only place

where we met in love. I could use it now.
The mother of my savior meets my gaze,
flocked by angels and saints of ages past.
I couldn’t reach out to her in moments

of pain or trial. No, that is not
my Mary. The Mary I like to think of
rests beneath faded arches of tufa,
tucked away in an old church where

the altar, clothed in light and lace, takes
the place of honor. A veil of cobwebs graces
her weathered head, which doesn’t bend
to peer at you; no, she is focused

on her son, broken and bent at
her knee, his arm extended across her lap
like a rod. There they sit, forever
silent amid the musty pews and dwindling

parishoners who come each week to cast
their worries and burdens and hurt aside at
the feet of their savior who accepted the pain
and suffering and understanding of humanity

to show the compassion of a loving God,
a God who chose a single mother to bear
the good news of a child who would one
day grow to be the man who needs her balm

of love spread across his scarred back,
for her to hold him and support him even
when the nails are driven into a plan
that takes the pain and comprehension of

a good God to understand.