Like us
By Patrick T. Reardon
In daylight, the Ghiberti gold
doors, behind a thick metal cell,
turn out to be a 1990 copy, and
the Thursday streets — after
holiday/holy day of All Saints —
are thick with end-of-season
tourists like us. The bells of
the cathedral ring, and the
beggar woman comes up,
recalling the swarms around
the Louvre finding rich rings
in the pavement that I must’ve
dropped, reminding me of this
morning when an Asian-looking
guy with good English asked
me in my Yankees hat where
the museum is — go down
and to the right — recalling an
Asian-looking man with no
English, down the street from
the Louvre, asking me with
outstretched guide book,
where to find the museum.
I pointed.
Over coffee at a small table, a
few steps from the cathedral
and the Baptistry with their
cake-icing designs — so much
strikingly white marble and
green marble with pink marble
detailing — I smell some rot,
probably from the sewer grate
to my right, although, at first,
I wonder if I am smelling myself
— but, no, yesterday is when I was
starting to grow overripe until
our lost luggage was found by
your salvific cab ride to the airport,
solving a minor mystery,
major for us.
A drip and drap of rain spots
my pad as the sun eases open
the fabric of overcast for a
moment and then lets it close,
like a vaguely curious god,
one without buildings or shrines
or much interest in me or you
or these other haloed ones,
crowding today’s plaza,
a cold, bright flower of fire
blossoming in the center of
each ever-pentecost forehead,
unseen except by babies,
sparrows and the insanely holy.
Patrick T. Reardon
8.22.24
This poem originally appeared in volume 8.4 of In Parenthesis, published 7.15.24.
https://inparentheses.art/
Written by : Patrick T. Reardon
For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.