Found

Not long ago, I was searching for something that had me looking through the website of my almost alma mater - Thomas More College (NH). While there, I stumbled across several issues of Communitas, the official magazine/newsletter, from my tenure at the college. During my semester in Rome I worked on a series of poems as part of my coursework, presenting them for critiques each week to the writing professor. Toward the end of the project, the professor (who also happened to be in charge of producing Communitas at that time) asked me to select two poems to appear in the next issue. Technically, the appearance of my work in Communitas was the first appearance of my work in print. As is befitting for a student's poetry, these pieces are a little too high-minded for their own good, but are, in their own way, rather experimental. I was still feeling out for the pacing of lines, trying to find what felt right in my mind's mouth. It took about two years for another piece to find a home on paper.

 

“La Piazza”

A fountain, rendered useless by the rain,

Gave its meek contribution to the street.

Potable water lost its clarity

As it ran off into the dingy-brown

Floodtide of the Easter Janiculum.

The city became more Venice than Rome—

The silting dynamic of renewal.

A wall-fountain by San Cosimato,

With a modern mosaic backsplash,

Dove into the walkway beneath the playplace.

Fresh rainwater mixed with the recycled

Waterfall that runs continuously.

Save a few cars and a starving student,

The entire piazza was empty.

The rain stopped a short while later.

The clouds threatened, keeping us all at bay,

Not wanting us to see the rebirthing

Of cobblestone, tessera, and asphalt.

Even the still-life that human hands made

Became re-lightened by the clouded sky.

“La Strada”

An

Accordion wafts its dulcet melodies through the streets,

And into eddies

Formed by brick walls

Trapping the late afternoon air tightly.

And in the drafts

Distance is lost

As laden strollers spend the sun crossing from nap

to nap

With not a care except their mother’s lingering

perfume

Mixing with the foreign sounds.

These

Buskers spend their time pumping and extracting

city air.

From time to time

They halt the wind

With the serpentine flow of their unabashed

extractions

Which carry with them a lifetime’s worth of

dripping sounds.