Sunlight and tree limbs sway across the back fence,
An Indonesian shadow play. The villain is my aloe vera
In the large clay pot. After it was transplanted,
We thought it would die, but it didn’t, its barbs
Sharp as ever, shoots growing long and green. There’s
A painting by Pietro Longhi of an apothecary’s dimly lit shop,
His aloe vera potted and doing fine—not something I believe—
While he examines the mouth of a Venetian woman
Wrapped in a white shawl, perhaps a courtesan with toothache.
To the side, a clerk writes a prescription or maybe just
An invoice to the lady’s patron. Regardless, the aloe vera
Needs no assistance, except perhaps a window with
Sunlight looking out onto a canal, water splashing
Against a dock, a fruit seller calling out the season’s
First lemons, another voice from below hawking cuttlefish.
In front of the basilica, the shadow of the campanile crosses
The tiled rooftops slow as history or the hands of a clock.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 3.
George Franklin is the author of Traveling for No Good Reason (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions); a bilingual collection, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas (Katakana Editores); and a broadside, “Shreveport” (Broadsided Press). He is also the winner of the 2020 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize.
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