Cracow

(for Meghan) This dawn of fog and lingering dreams, you feel the centuries in your waking body. Cracow lies on a river at the foot of a hill. Light and bells awaken senses. Black now in shadows, hawkers fill the market square. Pigeons greet your nose and eyes, and flowers. You give a gnarly woman coins, and stare up at the sky, and see the fairy towers, the malachite-green roofs, above which rooks fly north from Brno, Prague, or Budapest. A fiddler plays his violin, and looks up toward you, knowing you’re too soft and green to pass him by. Your senses cannot rest. The day begins, old, musty and serene.