Cathedrals, mosques, mosaics, stained glass
windows, stones, ruins, paintings,
statues, blend and blur, or disappear.
Was I ever here? There? Did I ride a camel
before the Great Pyramid of Giza?
Did I see completely covered Turkish women
buying sexy underwear?
Michelangelo’s uncircumcised “David?”
An old Mary in his “Pièta Rondanini” in Milan?
A young man offering twenty camels
for the young female
guide sitting at our table?
My loving husband by my side all these years,
what we have seen abides somewhere,
Michelangelo’s bearded God not quite touching
Adam’s finger, large muscular bodies painted
on the ceiling.
Down and across, I am tired of looking up.
The long plane rides going hence and coming home,
jetlagged, worn, I am not sorry
to have gone,
to have not missed
all this splendor.
How much can one absorb?
What did I come here for?
To see what I haven’t seen,
To see the universal in the commonplace,
To hearken to my heart’s movements, searching
for wisdom in my becoming
a ruin, stone, or perhaps
an Egyptian goddess embalmed
for the afterlife.
I will not be here again.
