Amy Barone’s latest poetry collection, We Became Summer, from New York Quarterly Books, was released in early 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone’s poetry has appeared in Café Review, Paterson Literary Review, Sensitive Skin, and Standpoint (UK), among other publications. She belongs to PEN America Center and the brevitas poetry community. From Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she lives in New York City.
Drop me off at Italy’s Gulf of Poets
to dance with the ghosts of artists
who drank in Liguria’s coast.
I’ll float along the Blue Mile, use it as my canvas.
Poet Persio landed here during the Roman Empire.
In Porto Venere, Lord Byron honed his swimming skills.
Playwright Sem Benelli wrote La Cena Delle Beffe
from his villa in San Terenzo.
George Sand painted and composed along the Bay.
I’m going to scoop up flowers in brilliant colors,
a final bouquet to me, breathe in laurel and rosemary scents.
Get lost in the alleyways of Tellaro.
Create one final masterpiece or three.
(First published in anthology Leisure – Dinner with the Muse)
Torbole
I didn’t find Torbole. Torbole found me.
It appeared on my computer screen one day
when I intended to surf the ‘Net.
The historic town dots Lake Garda’s northern shores,
where houses form an amphitheater along the bay.
Mount Baldo’s slopes rise above it. Olive groves
flourish in an Italian spot blessed with rare flowers
and a balmy wind. Seduced by its beauty, Goethe
named it “land where lemons bloom.”
Now it calls to me, though I ended my affair with Italy
years ago and never visited the Trentino region.
Is it a sign that I need to explore more, move back
to live out my days closer to ancestral ghosts?
I don’t sail or climb, but I adore breezes and the sea.
Can destiny lead me to a place with a face I don’t know?
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Poetry in this post: © Amy Barone
Published with the permission of Amy Barone