It's Still Life

Vicariously Vigàta

No more news. Not tonight. No more gasps for air. No more funeral pyres, or smoke and fire. No more wives in tears, or men beating chests, and no more orphans ghostly stares. I escape it all, if just a while, watching reruns on the TV. Police drama in Vigàta. A Sicilian seaside town. The old streets. The old churches. Subtitled conversation. Weeds growing between the cobbles. The sandstone scenery and dry summer heat that roils with trouble. I know their troubles like I know my own. Small town crimes of passion. Crimes of greed. Sins a kind heart might forgive. But who can forgive a virus that steals breath from your throat, an attacking army within an invisible breath that turns the air to poison.

It’s not just smoke
A moon the colour of butter
In broken chunks of sky

for dVerse Poets “Haibun Monday” © Misky 2021