By the time you save enough
to make it to Capri, Mrs. Onassis
will have long since gone away,
and everyone will sigh, will say
how glamorous it was before the souvenirs,
the sex shops and the packaged holidays.
You’ll dutifully climb up the hill
to roam the ancient villa ruins, sail
the famous blue-lit grotto cave, all this
seen through the camera lens
auditioning to be the past
and somehow not as you’d imagined
from the guidebooks, memoirs, magazines.
You’ll check your watch, you’ll catch the hydrofoil--
so fast--and yet the future runs away
like plans made in Pompeii or schemes
hatched on one August day in Herculaneum
across the broad and smiling bay.
--Patrick Mizelle
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