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.
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