Anne Fitzgerald
Tuscany
No kids ride yellow burnt sienna horses, piazzas holds weather at bay
stillness fills cumulus clouds with the ease of rain falling up lands
in elsewhere arches where wisteria threads Corinthian pillars, masks
stone faces, trace its grain as the pupil dilates, diminishes to a pin-prick
in Florence without a pope like the shadow aspect of faded frescos
knowledge colours its application of: jade-ochre, pigments skin-pink,
as flat rose tinted windows catch earlier shadow-light of a faded dusk
whilst sun skewers the features of saints, puts colour in their faces back
to back, illuminates fractures and bruises to the index, got pealing apples
in tart making pursuit, pastry rolled and egg washed for hundred ‘n eighty
degrees as the albumin congeals: flour self-raises, heat holds air just so,
so it does, binds wheat bathed under a harvest moon wide off the mark
like a prince that has abdicated or an ecclesial heresy a cutting away.
Anne Fitzgerald’s collections are The Map of Everything (Dublin, fortyfootpress.com 2006) and Swimming Lessons (Wales, Stonebridge, 2001). She has edited, produced and designed four anthologies of young adults’ poetry: The Colour of the World, The Compass (2003, 2004), Uncharted Voyage and Deep Canyons (2004, 2005). She is a recipient of The Ireland Fund of Monaco Writer-in-Residence at The Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco.