Florence

Sometimes I wake up, and the morning lies

as flat as fresco, like Cimabue's

panels, or stained glass in the Uffizi.

She takes my face between her hands and tries

to model me in the way that her eyes

look at the world. What is it she can see

that no one's ever seen before in me?

A figure? Something she can recognize?

A little like Giotto, when he wrapped

his rufous sunlight half around the face

of the Madonna, lovingly and apt,

so not to render her within a place

where (like me) she might be forever trapped,

but letting her step forward into space.