Bernini’s sculptures float
over fountains like
a ship’s mast set in stone,
straining to stray off-course.
I follow the muscular, hysterical
flow of the Four Rivers.
Lethe bubbles underground.
Step lightly.

Chubby-faced children spew
showers between their cheeks.
Nothing is quiet in Piazza Navona,
spreading to the seven hills
like a blanket of bedlam.
Heaving waves of tourists
Speak to themselves in tongues.
Whose gift to Roma is this?
The Four Winds? The spigots spilling
holy water onto the hordes
of heedless souls?

Neptune stares down on
my dampened bald spot.
I will Photoshop it out
if he snaps my picture.
Or some petite, American tourist
will, craning her head
like a dolphin
flopping on Neptune’s trident.

Navona is a nova of marble
and foam.
Specters live here.
They shout here, they circle.
Bernini’s spawn.