The rill of blood from rib to thigh; tendons
stretched taut, gravity’s ache straining through;
flesh the weathered ochre of exhumed bone—
Brunelleschi’s Christ shook Donatello so,

he dropped his basket of eggs. Eras later,
outside Santa Maria Novella,
a nursing mother’s breast turned sootier
with each step we took, her day’s pool of lira

collecting in her skirt-lap, flies on the orbits
of her infant’s eyes. Sights from a honeymoon,
reposited in memory—like our coin
after coin to light the angels, saints, lunettes—

along with the noise of Christ, eggs, soot, flies,
and the wing-brush of skirts across stone floors.