My second day of the Post a Poem a Day for 5 days Challenge.
Here is ‘Spa Visit’ which is in my poetry collection Taking Flight (Oversteps Books, 2009) and I nominate Jackie Juno to post one of her poems every day for 5 days and tag someone new each day.
Spa Visit
In San Giuliano we find the spa
where Shelley and Byron bathed
for their health.
We stand outside in bright sun
to watch the fountain play.
You point to a balcony, a statue,
Giuliano himself perhaps.
He looks a little like the Pope,
all in white with a short cape and ?.
Slowly we realise, it is a folded parasol.
We have seen so many statues,
we are hallucinating. We begin to laugh.
We laugh out in the hot garden,
by the spa where Shelley bathed,
shortly before he drowned.
We laugh, holding on to each other,
while the Pope looks down on us,
or is it San Giuliano,
and the white coated spa attendants
flit past open doors.
We laugh, while the old men watch us
from the shadowed side of the town square.
I put my hand in the fountain
and wonder if Shelley felt any premonition
while he relaxed in the sulphured thermal waters,
sinking into their healing embrace.
poem and photo Rose Cook
Rose Cook 