I left a jacket

            Purposefully

            At the Piazza della Signoria

            Not because it was a little short in the arms

            Or overworn, or because its pockets

            Tangled up the things I placed in them

            With shredded fabric decades old that

            Made it hard to extricate what I consigned

            Nor because it wasn’t handsome

            Or had ceased to be a bulwark to a biting wind

            Least of all because of style

            Which, when I bought it, 

            Had the stamp of ‘modern’ timelessness, 

            So I was told

            This jacket – it was a gentle brown,

            Soft, but not too delicate, 

            A skin whose sacrifice was compensated

            By the care and skill it took

            To make it lendable to me

            And as a second skin it helped

            To get me through a lot of

            Weathering

            The moment of its purchase

            Was a happy one, as moments go

            But, you see, 

            The thing about moments

            Is that they’re surrounded by a 

            Fore and aft, embedded in

            Some kind of pool that stretches

            Everywhere until it’s time to sink

            It was the endless stream of youth at the piazza, 

            The fusillade of dreams under

            The gaze of Perseus the other day

            That made me wonder not

            How innocence becomes a 

            A pillar of the state

            I watched these happy ghosts

            Who knew bright promises could lie in wait,

            Experts in hope and, in their 

            Necessary selfishness, the truth

            About what it should mean

            To be alive

            Despite immortal worms of grief

            That crawl inside a heart and

            Sometimes stir when least anticipated –

            That they could take, and

            Broken loves and the incessant

            Effort to be understood

            With language laying siege and

            Taking prisoners of every word

            That, I’m convinced, they could endure

            Until they reached a line 

            Or was it more a mien,

            A mask of crusted blood that

            Thickly grew with every new recruit

            Who fell upon the easy side of power

            And stayed –

            The face of how things had to be –

            Forgetting who they were or

            Who they might have been?

            I prayed for more to make the harder choice

            And got the thought

            To leave my jacket, 

            Late at night, 

            Upon the shoulder of an ancient

            But decided it was better fitting

            At his feet: it still had use, and 

            Little history to burden 

            The discoverer

            I bought myself another on a whim, 

            Partly to celebrate, partly to rejoice

            Because it wasn’t out of need

            This time with levity