Your Italy

I want to see your Italy
where water washed colors
make me feel at home
in another country

Let me hear the swish of skirts
as ladies stroll across
cobbled streets on their way
to where ladies go on rainy afternoons

The carriages roll and people go
but the woman in the white dress waits
did she know she was the center
of your Italy?

You render graceful golden trees
and I wonder if there's
an umbrella for me
in your Italy.






*The painting is Maurice Prendergast's Monte Pincio, Rome, ca. 1898–99. It is part of the "Prendergast in Italy" exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston that I was able to see on Friday.