NaPoWriMo (Day 21): From school to Florence

 
Starting this one at 945pm, after commuting, an exercise class and dinner. My brain is melting!
 
For the month of April, I’m writing a poem a day from prompts on https://www.napowrimo.net. You can click on the headlines (Day One, etc) to view/add comments. There’s also a list of participants’ sites below the site header.

21

Today’s (optional) prompt is one I got from the poet Betsy Sholl. This prompt asks you to write a poem in which you first recall someone you used to know closely but are no longer in touch with, then a job you used to have but no longer do, and then a piece of art that you saw once and that has stuck with you over time. Finally, close the poem with an unanswerable question.

From school to Florence
 
Janet C was my best friend at infant and junior school.
We’d play and dress up, walk home together, and were
inseparable. We stayed in touch when I changed schools,
but then I moved away, and it was impossible back then –
not like today with mobile phones and the internet
to stick you together like glue. We’d have to beg our fathers
to use the house phone to make “daylight robbery”-priced
conversations that everyone could hear from the hallway.
 
Those were the days. I once worked in a supermarket
at the weekends at uni. Cue a dizzy day from 7am to 7pm.
One lady used to put a sweet on the conveyor belt for me,
and another would ask me to look after all her bags
while she looked around. Then there was the man who asked me
to marry him just because he was “useless” at shopping.
And lastly there was the very angry woman who swung for me
after I charged her for a carrier bag. It was company policy.
 
There is a bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David at the crest of a hill
in Florence. From the piazza, he watches the sun set in the evening
and rise in the morn. He times every tourist who attempts the climb
from his majestic pose, gazing out over the whole of the city below,
taking in Forte Belvedere to Santa Crose, the bridges of the timeless Arno,
and the hills of Settignano and Fiesole in the misted backdrop.
 
Do you think he’s wondering if there’s life on Mars?
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 21, 2022