That year it was Florence and Tuscany

and we had the best bistecca anyone could remember,

better than Luger's, better than Delmonico's,

better than anything out of Texas,

and the Tuscan wine was the color

of well-oxygenated blood

and we drank quite a lot of it.

One day I went for a run along the Arno

and the river troubled me —

the rush of the river, the water's anger —

anyway, the Arno troubled me.

It was March and snowmelt from the Alps

made it one big nasty torrent;

where the current roiled, the churned wash

had a rusty orange hue, probably

from some sediment particular to the Arno.

Something about it disturbed me as I did my out-and-back

and I turned around after running through

a very civilized park with bocce courts and nicely

manicured bushes and flowerbeds and there were

old men in their Sunday suits slowly walking

with their hands clasped behind their backs.

When I could see the Ponte Vecchio again

I passed three Carabinieri and they were

all cradling very compact submachine guns

with black foregrips and short black barrels

and they were laughing and looking very carefree

and I thought I'd be pretty carefree too

if I walked around with a compact submachine gun

and I thought it probably isn't a good idea

to try to knock over a liquor store in Florence

and I thought someone must've made a real killing

getting the Carabinieri contract for all those guns.