Almost breathing in that heady,
pungent, earthiness,
even if it's only in my mind.
All over Santa Fe, New Mexico,
folks will be roasting
this year's green chiles,
and I am feeling
an unexpected ache
for a place I thought
I had left forever.

Flickering indistinctly, like the last reel
of an early silent film,
these blurry shadows of windblown leaves
project themselves into
the corners of this simple room.

Inside my mind is another room, lit by intuition.

It is here that possibilities are delicately considered,
weighed, ever so gently, for their potential as eventuality.

This is not to say that my heart never holds sway
in these measured evaluations.

Oh, yes. It does win, from time to time.

Life is just sweeter, I have found, when peace reigns
between these two old friends, and a mutual accord is reached.

Early in its life, this grand old tree
decided to grow in opposite directions at once.

Not exactly conducive to longevity
my beautiful, leafy friend.

I know.

You have seen many of us,
also our marriages, our families
trying to do the same, impossible thing.

Inevitably, the weight of years, the pull of gravity
splits us down the middle, leaving us with a fatal wound,
like this one of yours, old friend.

Recent, rogue storms,
torquing you with gale force winds,
have opened fresh, damaging splits.

Even your own generous embrace of the sky
has left you open to disease where you are weakest,
as are we, dear friend, who have stood in your shade
imagining you destined for a venerable old age.

It is not to be, not this time.

Already, limbs are being cut down to lessen the risk
to the neighbor's roof, and to the skulls of passing pedestrians.

Enough of you will be left,
as the chilly nights come on,
for you to blaze out
in generous, leafy glory,
one last time.

Small and observant,
this girl child already loves her solitude.
Dark eyes taking in everything for much later,
long hair a little mussed-up, tumbling over feet pyjamas,
she stands quietly in the doorway of her little bedroom.

Across old parquet floors, into spare white rooms
she gazes at the grown-ups in their party clothes,
secretly planning that someday she will be one of them.

Plain white origami birds, suspended from the high
vintage ceilings, hand-made from her poet-mother's
typing paper, are the only decorations.

The soft, indirect lighting, all invented by her father
out of simple things, creates a perfect visual tone.

This quiet inventor has also chosen jazz he loves
to animate the evening for his friends.

These grown-ups in their party clothes,
yellows, greens and reds, puffy skirts, stiletto heels,
men in simple suits, white shirts, thin black ties,
talented painters, holocaust survivors, intellectuals,
talking, laughing, smoking too much, martini glasses in hand.

What stayed with her most was the music, and the way
it brought the whole world right to her.
Jazz from here in her native city,
Soft, sultry Bossa Nova that her soul knew even better.

Only some of what she saw that night became the life she chose.

The intimacy of observing, of silently forming words around
what she saw, talking and laughing with friends,
loving passionately, getting scorched to the bone,
and the music, the music....

The music would always stay with her, leading her across
wide expanses of this beautiful old world
to the parts of it that she would someday taste, and see.

Her life would become the stretching wide open of her heart.

To love it all, to write about it all.
to give this back, someday,
to the music, and to this big, beautiful old world.

Seven generations Roman,
and one hundred percent male.

That voice, like thunder and wind over Lazio,
and a smile that could melt your kneecaps.

Surging with life, laughing, singing,
telling stories from his naughty boyhood,
here on the cobbled streets that he loved so well.

Fiercely loyal, a truer friend could never be found.

When he sang 'Vivrò!' smacking his old guitar just once,
and then roaring into song,
he did live forever, right there and then.

We live on, caro Bambù, transfused
by your vibrant, unforgettable memory.

Way before people in human form,
we existed as air and light.

Lavender lights in the northern regions
called to each other, and we responded freely.

Sound sounded differently then, reaching
inside our airy souls, overarching temporal existence.

Dancing through infinite space, leaping beyond knowing,
we became pure unfettered feeling.

Come across the threshold of light, riding on your smile.
All that was then, is still our ancient home.