You were sitting on the seawall watching the sunset,
While wavelets slapped at jumbled boulders below.
What ruins are these? Does anyone living remember?
You wondered at their luminous shapes wavering in the water.

Earlier you could see all the way to Bregenz – half the picture was alpine peaks!
But then these clouds moved in and no one would believe all that could be seen from here.

A sloop leaned, as its canvas filled, maybe a mile away.
The shifting breeze brought at first the conversation of a couple nearby,
Then teenage girls laughing from a boat in the harbor.

A man was walking down the path, lurching now and then as softer soil gave way beneath his cane.

All the chestnut trees were in bloom!
Their billows of creamy blossoms impossibly thickened the thick air.
Their perfume carried you away.

You returned to the afternoon, when that sideways light threaded through the trees,
Dancing on a wall and window across the street.
A memory that bubbled up then made you feel so strange.

Last night it rained. Now the streets smell like stone. The light is different.
Everything has changed.

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