Just a Street

A quiet place to be, this small window, for fragments of thought and touch. Here is the color of my next over street, people's gardens throwing light on a gray day. Streets so different from my New York streets. Old streets still but no bustle, particularly now in our curfew virus time, but so tender it all feels, reminding me of the sweetness of Collodi's narrator in Pinocchio,when he replies to the excited children, the bambini, no, not a story about a king, my little ones. A tale about a piece of wood, just a simple piece of wood, un semplice pezzo da catasta, from the woodpiles that warm our winter nights. I do not know what will appear on these pages, or why at 80, sentences, expressions, cling to me. Non mi picchiar tanto forte! Do not hit me so hard, this same piece of wood says on the next page as the carpenter tries to chip away at him to form a table leg. I cannot get those words out of my head. Please do not hit us so hard.