2000/venice

Venice is trying
to keep the tourists out.
I’ve always wanted to go.
When I was young I was
enchanted by gondolas.
Just the word made me forget
my crippling fear of water.
It was romance that I was after,
and this was surely it.

The Venice mayor has hired
a celebrated photographer,
plastered the city with posters
of dead rats.
But I can see Venice in the background
and I still want to go.
To see its rotting walls for myself.
To see the side of it where there is land.
I want to walk its streets & alleys,
near dawn,
on a week day when no one is out.
And see Venice as it was
and try to remember the things
I used to dream.

3/24/00