The grand passeggio of the sky

She In Italy
For Celestina

Singing tomatoes and billowing bread maraud through
the streets, an armada of aroma slicked with pressed
olives and the roughshod skins of travelers who have
come a long way to be vanquished by it, savor the rich
defeat laid at their noses, scuttle the ruined temples of
their mouths surrendered now to a will of their own.

It is summer late in the high hill country, the patina
of a spurred boot scrubbed by the green sun as the air
from Manfredonia and Foggia fights overhead, one
swinging salt, the other molten blood. She’s in Italy
and to see her step among stones in the heart of town
smiling like the village she bears within her is enough
to ignite another sun in the grand passeggio of the sky.



I wonder if she will kiss someone as she would me
were I there sipping the pale vintage of her napled
neck with my eyes and the softly caesared caresses
of my Roman mouth. I would surely raise emblems
within her, bold shields of conquest unfurling above
winds that press her towards that part of herself she
barely knows, the supple terrains that know their true
contours only here among her people, the rich republics
of her noble blood, seasoned and set towards relic stars
that have yet to rise and reclaim their unnamed provinces.

I would see her now, in leggings and breastplate,
a soldier of life scouting the living of it here, where
she was born, before she ever set foot in this world.

Joseph Gallo
September 16, 2008