for Sue, in Florence
I had to laugh when the kids
on the Ponte Vecchio overlooking the Arno
pointed and yelled, pronounced
in three languages RAT
and you turned to me, insisting
it must be an otter.
Me a New York kid who’d perched
on the wall in Astoria Park
looking down at rocks edging
the East River, I saw what
swam at the edges of playgrounds,
what scrambled up to eat.
Otter! I didn’t even hear the word
till I was 30, much less see one
except for Nature on TV.
Did you really mean there were otters
in that Ohio town where you grew up
in a private house fully insured?
As foreign to me as rats to you:
that moment when your father handed
your high school boyfriend the key
to his new convertible and said Drive.
That June day I was riding the BMT
at rush hour when some guy
lifted the wallet from my bag,
stroked through the crowd, out
and down the platform
as the doors shut again and the train
slid under the river.