Brick and breviary, cobble and keepsake. 
All day I tried to belong to that encircled city  
but nothing would have me. The walls 
that kept tourists in kept wonder out, 
luscious Tuscan light used up by breakfast.  
How could I give myself to 72 medieval 
towers when 58 had been knocked down?

I touched the ones I could. Not enough. 
I almost dissolved in a crow’s cocked eye, 
my wife almost fell for a stab of cathedral   
light. Not enough. You can belong to quivering
motes of dust or take a selfie but not both.
And no shriveled finger of a Saint 
to buoy me up. That was in sister city Siena.

Something flew away, was it my hope 
or a maimed pigeon in search of bread? 
By day’s end, I was happy to sit at the bus stop, 
owned by no one. Why, at that moment, 
did some genius of bow and rosin
choose to practice Beethoven at an open 
window? Why did that bungled song move me 

and not the sites? Maybe I was tired, maybe 
my drawbridges were finally down. 
I have pictures galore, twisting stairs, stone 
mouths burbling water, wind-licked dresses 
drying on a line, a dragonfly pausing 
on a cross⎯not one image of the sublime. 
Was some diligent boy practicing for a try-out? 

Or maybe a thirty-something divorcee 
playing for her life? I squinted at that bank
of windows. Then gave up, relaxing 
into seesawing octaves, eyes closed. 
How do you take a picture of a broken song?  
I was a stone saying thank you to rain, 
some scruffy stray ready to taste everything.