Giacomo picked me up

coming out of Standa grocery store
walking in the sun toward the Tram Otto
I see a smiling face looking at me
It’s Mirella

there, at an outside coffee bar amid traffic on Vialle Trastevere,
we sat at a table and reunited with Mirella and Aldo
now four years retired from the outdoor market,
she’s had each leg operated on and is walking again,
I had painted her many times when they worked
in the Piazza Campo Dei Fiori

later Giacomo picked me up near the bar of the witch
at the corner of Lungo Tevere and Vittorio Emanualle
we went to Donetella’ restaurant for lunch,
she was in Copenhagen, but the staff was there
the lad from Romania called me by name,
the parmigiana di melanzane that looked like taquitos
and tasted like heaven
lucca looked older, walked with a crutch,
he had an accident on his motorino,
Sunday he goes to his sailboat in Barbados
to take tourists around for a month

heavy rain again this afternoon in Roma
after lunch Giacomo dropped me off
in front of Santo Spirito Hospital, one of the
oldest continuous running hospitals in the world,
I’ve spent some nights there before the renuvation,
when the church part was a large open ward for the men,
this afternoon I caught a bus from there

on the way home I stopped to inquire
about an old friend, a gentle man,
we used to see quite often dining at the Oassi,
he taught at catholic college, used to play piano duets
with Pope Ratzinger in private rooms at the Vatican,
last year he was doing better, his voice returned,
the lady at the coffee bar said
he became weak again this summer,
after forty years in Roma
Father Lawrence went home to London to die

the sky has darkened,
it’s only four p.m.,
the street lights are on already,
it's colder now,
how quickly days tumble by
as we reach December