.read and reminisce.

The photographs of the summer trip are spread
acrross the table now like litte mirrors
reflecting our place in European history.

They are the booty of travel, bordered and colorful,
split seconds that we pass to friends after dinner
one by one to make them believe we really fround
some sweet elsewhere, away from here.

There we are, the familiar gazing out of the foreign,
stopped in front of a carved Cistercian door,
or leaning obliquely against a kiosk;
frozen behind a blue and white Della Robia,
or parked at a cafe table strewn with phrasebooks,
obscured there in the underexposed shadow of an
awning.

The waiter in the background, mustache and apron,
is carrying a tray of drinks to others even now
as we flip through the stack another time,
noticing how we tried to be as still as paintings
until the quick rustle of the shutter released us

to walk on again, unfocused, unphotographed,
moving down a street of flowerboxes, motorcycles,
two blurs in the weakening light of evening,
black cameras capped, swaying blindly at our sides.

Strange Lands, by Billy Collins
(..for mkh...)