Usual Musings

It must be one or two in the morning.

I lie in bed and

have pulled the blankets,  

really only one,

up to my shoulders.

And there

in that triangle of sky

at the top of a shaft between the shutters

through which light can filter,

I sometimes see,

–      from where I lie –

the moon or at least a star.

They disappear as the earth or the moon

continue in their revolutions,

and by five o’clock

the sky is that leaden milky white telling me day has begun.

That bit of sky has morphed into

what I could swear was a lampshade.

If there’s a breeze the large leaves of a potted plant,

the only green I see,

contrast with the golden tufa walls,

and show their lighter undersides.

The sky above is now what as a child

I called sky-blue pink

although there was no pink to be seen.

Before long – on this hot summer day –

I get a fleeting glimpse of movement.

A man is walking up invisible stairs to the terrace

right next to my window.  

Centuries ago there was a narrow lane

between the houses here.

I see no stairs but know they must be there.

He’s wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt, grey or blue,

hard to tell, and is carrying a large copper tube.

Before long another figure, also in a short-sleeved t-shirt

 and holding what seems to be a box,

passes across my field of vision.

They are already at work before the sun burns down.

Soon then it is time for me to start the day,

to be robed like a vestal virgin,

obviously no longer a virgin,

since I have two sons –

I have, as they say, known man.

I wonder what the vestal virgins did wear under their veils.

In the Greek and Roman statues

You never see any underwear.

It’s the human body, unconstrained, that interested the artists.

Nor do you see so-called underwear

in the Renaissance

although the ladies certainly must have worn something

under the velvets and satins that indicated their rank,

dictated, of course, by the men.

How many buttons were the aristocrats allowed,

how many meters of cloth in their skirts?

Humble women wore shorter dresses that would not hinder them in their menial tasks

and probably didn’t give a hoot about buttons and lace.

Now that we are in summer,

I must be careful, when outside, that the wind does not blow my skirts up over my head.

In winter for me it is

layer after layer before I am ready to move down

two steps to my walker.

With a guardian angel named Tania

to watch over me.