Water Clocks

The singing of the blind school

    children and the

Mediterranean’s flat expanse are metaphors

for every kind of solitude made

    forgivable by time.

The hillside museum with rows of empty

earthen vessels is full of it. A stillness

    so replete

it resembles something like intimacy.

A fullness only partially fathomed.

    Like water clocks

and sundials that allowed time to be

translated into elements: droplets, shadows.

    And the laughter

of bathers from the spiaggetta.

~

The train stops just outside of Naples

    where I buy a glass

of cold juice squeezed from tangerines

and walk into Pompeii. I couldn’t have

    imagined the

magnitude of it. Brilliant pillars flush

with sky. Temples where sunlight

    streams white

and seems to radiate from inside

the stones. Certain histories require

    forgetfulness.

Others, strict belief. But I think

some histories live us. In the higher cities

    of the brain,

even the speechless ones are burning.