Up at the Villa

Figs, lemons, almonds and holidaymakers, the fronds of palms and those fierce plants whose sharp extrusions in place of leaves, so uncompromisingly rigid and pointed,

could pierce the heart with a dagger thrust, like the imagined, feared loss of your only child, here in this arid, heated beauty nourished by varieties of liquidity, these green and red

inclines about the bay’s gigantic encircling, its blue line floating below the sky’s clouded elevation, above those trees that distance makes

resemble shrubs. And there amidst the haze, its intermittent glitter, one small boat with white sails, apparently motionless.