Florence

My favorite city in the world is Florence
And not just any Florence but the tiny one
On a shelf in a photograph from which I laugh
At myself seated in a chair at a desk
In an office that lacks Florence
For an address, so that people when they come
In to say hi or with a work-related question
Sometimes wonder aloud where and when
And though I answer, I never tell them
I’m terrified to have traveled so far
Away from Florence, my face a calendar,
My face a clock. The wife leaning against me
I left on that street, that Florence of an afternoon,
Of a quick cafe and a bit of rain
And a beggar boy who didn’t merit
The camera’s stare, selling sweets from a bag
In a plaza that didn’t make the cut in Baedekers,
The droplets in her hair composed
Of the same dull drizzle as anywhere
So that when it rains in the office parking lot
I am soaked with the rains of Florence
Though no one knows, not even my wife,
To whom Florence belongs equally,
A Florence that hardly matters except to us
No history, no wars or plagues, no inferno
Or paradiso, just two people standing
In the one place on earth no one cares, no one asks
About Florence because they’re already there.

                                                          —David Moolten