Although the words found in
the middle of the night were
there, clear and maybe almost
in poem form, something
happened around dawn to shake
the sand back to the bottom
of the sea inside the bay of
your mind.

The awkward weight
of the tower at Pisa
causes some of the stone
columns to crack like bad love –
All of it so obvious
in the middle of the night when
even the raspy motorbikes,
the broken-bottle
drunks have slowed down,
passed out, gone to bed.

The small city sleeps and
reminds you of Mexico and
the only sound is the nightingale
and it could be some other
bird but you want everything
else the nightingale represents.

As you sign out the next
morning you think it cute
and probably normal that one
of those birds skitters
in from the garden, its scaly
toes sliding across the
lobby’s marble floor, but the
manager does not think it cute.

He looks at you looking at the
bird as if it were another attraction
your travel agent promised and he
runs out from around the desk,
hurling Italian curses, chasing the bird
out. You get back to your room
and see it all right there on the
itinerary:

Saturday – Leaning Tower of Pisa
Sunday Morning – Bad hotel breakfast,
followed by songbird antics in
the lobby including a manager
who is a paid look-alike
of any number of famous bald,
Italian bicycle racers.
A must see!