POEM - Venice

If I could visit Venice

How would my poetry read?

Would it sway like the easy slung back
Sunlight off of canal waters?
Would it hold the ciarroscurro shadows
Of statues, bridges and spires?
Would it peal majestically like church bells?
Would it feel as expansive as those stone plazas?
Round as the rolling Venetian tongue
Rippled like cobblestone?
Would love inch through me, muscle by muscle
Like a gondola, leisurely and expectant?
Would home fill my nostrils
Unlocking the memory held in my DNA?
Would I comprehend romance as my native language?
Would it turn me into a fountain
Of lasting beauty and would I
Finally come to see myself as “beautiful”?

If I could visit Venice
Would I fall in love with my life again?
Know that desire has geography
And borders and requires passports?

And how would my poetry read?

Would words avoid me, fly from me like birds?
Would the city devour me? In its breezy hustle, be
Digested whole, spit me out into the sea
To be caught by local fisherman the following
Day and haggled over at the market place?

Could I ever sleep again?

Would my heart ever return to its normal size
Or would it simply explode?