I walk to the newsstand over
blue gray cobblestone jumping up
my soles, the windows of
every mother in Viterbo
looking at my swaying arms,
at the very reason I love

the squint of eyes in morning sun.

Because I am free from anticipating  
a slow sinking earth, hung twined,
hung taut, hung thin, hung dried,
peeling off the body like
scree, relenting.  

Because I am ten.

From five lire scrunched in a fist, from
a father’s request for Il Messaggero,
steps can brim with direction, with place,
with an appetence for growing
a grown man would lunge at.
Could make a mute anchorite sing again
to an unsacred sky: “a son is a son as
a song is a song, this is that I am

is why I belong.”

I walk to the newsstand
under glaring windows, under
the look of all Viterbo’s mothers,
under the sluice of morning sun
that piques the eyes as sliced brine,

and the stand is shuttered.
Dirt metal slats I touch once
to make sure, and then I walk
straight back, back with the sun now
behind, illuminating stone, in front of me.