Through My Living Eyes

More than a century past in Bari,
my Gramma’s Papa worked.
She seems to lead me through the streets.
Though I don’t know where I’m going
I find myself in the oldest part of town.

The statue of a composer famous then,
Piccinni standing with stylus and paper,
already towered when my Gramma
walked here with her Papa.
A teacher, he would have talked to her
about Piccinni’s operas, now forgotten.
Here’s the theater named for him,
a building that my little Gramma passed.

Norman Swabian Castle Bari

I don’t know where I’m going but
I feel her spirit close, seeing through my eyes.
The government palace must have seemed
imposing to a child, but oh, the Swabian castle
would have been the stuff of fairy tales.
I don’t know where I’m walking
but I put myself in her shoes,
and she leads me right to the wharf,

where I see, through the curtain of time,
the five-year-old girl with her family
boarding a boat in the port of Bari
to move to the north of Italia.
Using my living eyes, she, also
perhaps sees through the mystery
of time and space. I feel
my serious Gramma smile.

©Susa Silvermarie 2019

Palazzo Governo