hopscotching a generation or two

in order to celebrate the day of his birth

which was officially recorded

but destroyed after a town-hall

"spring cleaning" in Lucca, Italy

of documents which “were no longer

useful to anybody”,–– my maternal

grandfather, who steamed here,

meaning the town of my birth,

with his young bride in tow,–– woke-

up one morning when I was a boy,

a child of grade school age, and

I remember his thinning mop of

grey/white hair sprouting across

his head in every direction, like

you’d see in the landscape of a foggy

Bella Lugosi film, his eyes half-lidded

between sleep and consciousness, but

more toward sleep, and his hair looked

much the same as my hair looks now,

and he was very old, but

younger than I am now, and he moved

as if moving to the sounds of a high

mass for the dead, much the same way

I'll move in the possibly near future,–– except

I rather enjoy listening to a good Requiem

on occasion and I'm sure he did not.

now playing: "Victoria Requiem" / 1548-1611 / Tallis Scholars / Gimell, 1987