The Last Three Days We Spend in Italy

We are awake somewhere in Orvieto, in a garden 

of red poppies, at dusk. I won’t remember this. Then: 

we cradle focaccia bread in paper 

and skin blood oranges in Florence, stumble past

fountains of still water, miles of dark 

cobblestone, a similar sun. I feel the same 

in new languages and eyes 

as I did at home—like paper torn poorly 

from a notebook—

and I think we walk for days, heat above 

and below us, my tongue 

a heavy, dry stone. They found new ruins beneath Rome 

last August. The excavation site wears 

caution tape and beer bottles 

like a chastity belt. I wonder aloud what it means 

to dig up something so ancient, and you flash Dolomite 

teeth when you say, 

It’s to admit you can’t know

how anything ends.