Poetry |

“You Are In Assisi and I’m Not”

You Are In Assisi and I’m Not 

 

There is something in the Umbrian landscape

that pumps my desire to learn to play the lute,

attempt a time travel to spend a weekend with Giotto,

a painted halo around both of our heads.

 

You would have been like Francis: divesting

all your possessions, walking into the village naked,

a bird on one shoulder and another in your hair.

I would have held fast to my meager hoard, a bourgeois

to the bone, wearing a revolutionary beret for show.

 

I hope that among the basilicas, castles and vineyards

you’ve encountered angels traveling the roads

and had your theological questions prepared to strike.

And perhaps during a long interlude of wine drinking

you were able to get them to spill out the definitive

definition of love, the best reason there could be

as to why you are in Assisi and I’m not.

Contributor
Tim Suermondt

Tim Suermondt is the author of four books of poetry, with number five coming from MadHat Press. He has been published in Ploughshares, Poetry, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Bellevue Literary Review and Plume among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong

Posted in Poetry

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