Chiaroscuro
Of course I remember Firenze—outside
and in. And I remember getting here, too,
sleeping on second-class trains
with a cheap leather coat as my pillow.
Marguerite and I stayed up all night, writing
in diaries by the light of little white candles
stolen from churches. Words I lost a long time ago.
We swore we’d come back, fluent in amore.
If I could find her now, I’d tell Marguerite
red-tiled roofs still frame this city
like an enormous Renaissance painting,
avenues still lively with Vespas.
All through the Uffizi, the flat pious faces
of women stare back at me—
their expressions so remote I wonder
what made them happy. Did they ever want
to loosen their pose, to push through
the canvas with the persuasion of youth?
Today I wander the Ponte Vecchio, buy
soft suede gloves the color of burnished butter,
the ones we couldn’t afford at twenty.
Afternoon light creates its own chiaroscuro
as I sit in the piazza next to the old hostel—
stippled shadows moving like something alive.
Bells empty their song over the cathedral steps
where we once shared pane dolce, a single cappuccino—
those days when we had nothing.
Judge’s comments:
This poem of memory captivated me with its intimacy and vibrant imagery— “thingness” as Ellen Bass puts it. I was drawn into the reverie of past travel, the quandaries and hopefulness of youth, the lost connection to someone dear, the loss of one’s own words. I kept returning to the moment where the speaker questions what made the young women in the paintings she saw at the Uffizi happy and whether they ever wanted to break those poses and escape. It brought to bear my own quandaries of lost youth and how much might have been wasted trying to meet others’ expectations. I could feel myself in the poem, though I’ve never been to Italy, and my heart kept yearning for a self who stole little white church candles and “had nothing” in the way this poet did.
Connie Soper
Connie Soper is a hard-core Oregonian who finds inspiration while hiking or beachcombing. Her poems have received recognition from the Oregon Poetry Association, Calyx, and the Neahkahnie Poetry Prize. Publications include Catamaran, The Adirondack Review, Cider Press Review, One Art, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere. Her first full-length of poetry, A Story Interrupted, published by Airlie Press in 2022, celebrates walking and witnessing her native
terrain.