Buona Fortuna

I throw a double eagle down the rain grate.  Better to get it back? Better to leave it lie? 
A gondolier insinuates his black bit of history into berth.  My ass seated neatly
on the curb, his cell phone conjured from a pocket.  The hansom horse eyes the old gold,

as staticky Italian demands white truffles, rain galloping down the gutter (chaos across
the Grand Canal.)  An unexpected nun, an early noon.   Taxi splash.  Oar groan. 
On the Lido, an old woman tallies green zeroes.  What color are forgotten promises? 

We be the mottoes of modern coinage, we be sleeping with the fishes.  Maybe beliefs
suspended in a paperweight.  Wearing our paper hats, we long lost opportunity. 
And then the water through the caulking, a little spot on the lung. 

I’m growing cold.  My tapping foot, my dial of indecision.
Above the Piazza, metal men dance on a platform, to the bells, to the moon:
now a bent crescent, now a half-apple, now a nickel to risk.

(Published in The Journal, Winter 2008)