Proposal

In the piazza Navona we sit and drink the past

we are bees at the flower, the fountain the acquifer

anyway whatever,
there's passable pizza, acqua vitae espresso

courage for the cluster of gems in
my pocket

And bees again buzzing  Barberini, 

patrons, villains, builders and killers, 

in the blood soaked robes of Rome

And laughing again at some joke you've made 

seeing reflected in your sunglasses

the face of your nearly husband scanning the square

for a place without pilgrims 

somewhere to add our history to all this layered meaning,

we're another generation with the unyielding idea of God.

When a Pope dies they melt his ring and leave a vacant throne until white Sistine smoke announces the next of Peter's line. Power and faith holding the masses at bay with love. Fuck knows what they do when one resigns.

I can just make out your eyes under the sunglasses face to the sun that way women do

soaking glamour and cell deep sustenance.

It's March I brought you here to warm you.

Yes your eyes then,

they've got that wide alertness you show when

the cells of you let go their prisoners and anything can happen,

but somehow you don't suspect this even though your Dad knows 

and I'll need a quieter place to do it; 

the only quiet place here when there's a new Pope on the go.

Really I planned this but didn't count on the daisies even 

and the real still heart of this place 

where poor miserable Keats declared to admiring eternity

his name was writ in water.

I'll write my name on you here.

You, still unaware though skipping through the daisies 

and finding Shelley you rest your head a while on my shoulder 

and seem to sigh.

Those Romantics liked a sigh 

and I would make a point of it 

half celebrate and undermine it, 

and we'd have what comics call 

a good 5 minutes of material from it

But this is serious earth now 

Romantics beat the comics. 

Over the wall busy Catholics leave me to my not quite secular promise.

Here lies one whose name was writ in water

The water of me not nervous, not stormy, 

not all waves like the death of Shelley 

more a steady break of wave upon wave 

at the sure shore.

This is roughly how I planned it, the failsafe place of poets. 

So Grecian Urn then mainly from memory and also my iPhone 

while you so happy in this glade 

and taking pictures of the light 

opening those cells that lock you up in winter 

so light-glad I can hear them I think 

crack open with your laughter

Fiddling with the camera you don't notice I'm on my knee

But listening to the ending of you as girlfriend 

beauty is truth, 

you know that don't you, 

your beauty often stops me in my tracks 

sending thoughts off track 

or one track in particular

you have just noticed me

on my knee 

saying "will you marry me?"

When you fire a gun without ear protection

The silence after the bang is surprising.

Your loud dancing YES loud enough 

to wake Keats light bounces off emerald grass 

white diamond daisies 

light through leaves 

and the latest waking bees 

do a dance with us through poet nourished trees 

in the old gold 

Roman sun.