Lucertola

Lucertola

We are embarking on a journey,
venturing into rough seas.
We sit ten rows back in a movie theater
and this Italian Sinatra serenades,
he is shining for a moment,
he has found a place to shine amongst the gray.
We are about to embark but
before we do we will watch a movie,
a warning perhaps,
about a ship that is wrecking,
a ship that is going down,
with an Italian woman and an Italian man
always swapping places at the helm,
and their daughter holding a bucket over the side,
scooping up bills from the sea of money
on which they ply.
As the ship runs aground,
there strikes a hole in the hull,
and we watch as Italy’s pride bleeds,
bleeds like a heart onto the beaches
and oils the pelicans red
and oils the crabs even more red
and at the end of the movie,
as we stand from our seats and meander
through the wreckage,
the woman next to me finds a dead animal and hands it to me.
‘What is this?’ I say. ‘It is a tail of moonlight,’
she says.  ‘In Italian they call it lucertola.’