Vox Populi
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Valerie Bacharach: Venice
My husband and I sit in Piazza San Marco, sip overpriced coffee
in morning sun, and at home my friend loses pieces
of herself each hour, forgets where she lives,
forgets the word puzzle, forgets stove, car.
Her son’s name.
People cross bridges on their way to work
or shop or perhaps to pray
at the Cathedral, looming over the piazza.
Years ago we went to Venice; my husband and I,
my friend and her husband.
Wandered through street markets with their array
of fresh fish, tripe sandwiches, piles of garlic and greens.
When we get home, I call her, ask if she remembers
the little hotel, the gelato we ate every day,
the restaurant where we drank too much wine,
the waiter who took our photo.
She sighs, says she is tired,
is going to lie down, take a nap.
I look again and again at that photo of us.
See how happy we were.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Valerie Bacharach
Valerie Bacharach’s publications include Last Glimpse (Broadstone, 2024). She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Its that insidious night we must rage against—that we get tired and fail. Forgive me this quiet moment—an early morning preparing numbers for 2 days work took me from Poetry and Art. The 2nd day begins soon, but Valarie’s and Doug’s words are brilliant as are the other posts of the former day and I am grateful for the beacon that ever shines into the darkness of human fragility.
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Thanks, Sean. These poems by Valerie and Doug are elegies disguised as anecdotes. Brilliant work, both of them.
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The imagery is so vivid. Valerie knows how to use cinematic writing to full effect. The more distinct her images, the stronger are the emotions she evokes in her readers. What a fabulous poem!
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I agree, Charlie!
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Such painful, deep tragedies all around us — such long, interminally painful years of goodbyes. I often think how it’s never mentioned mentions that we, older souls, are orphans too. That there really isn’t an age when one stops being an orphan, right?
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Yes, you’re right, Laure-Anne.
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Love every word. ❤️
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Oh, Lord, how this brings the tragedy of dementia home! Brilliant. Just now, my two (literally) oldest friends on earth are deep into the condition. The only relief is that one of them was, like me, a vocalist in a band when we were young, and if I start some old doowop tune on the phone, however age-husked my voice, he joins right in with the harmony. But is that really relief, come to think? It too breaks my heart.
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Having lost my mother to Alzheimer’s and talking to a therapist friend, who had also lost hers the same way, we agreed that the relief we felt at the deaths of our mothers, was preceded by anticipatory grief. At the end it was like our mothers were no longer our mothers. They had already left. She was on the editorial board of the Journal of Poetry Therapy, and I gained many an insight on the healing power of poetry reading its pages. With the death of my wife, years later, it was no help at all.
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I bet it’d be the same for me. My heart goes out to you!
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Almost the same happened to me with my best friend. What a heartbreaking poem, so beautifully crafted.
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Yes, I like Valerie’s poem for their elegiac tone and subtle understatement.
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My mom outlived two husbands while mine was sinking into dementia from Parkinson’s. She sat at my table and watched the jacaranda tree that is blooming now as it was then. Over and over she declared its beauty as a new discovery. But she insisted that she must return to her rose cottage and I couldn’t deny her that though it meant long trips to Ramona twice a week, around my job and Fred’s decline.
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A lovely prose poem, Barb. Thank you.
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memory loss pulled joy and awareness out of my mother, in ways like the friend in the poem. I think of Mom today. And my father, who carried her through five years of diminishment. She would have loved Venice, except the garlic. she hated that.
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Thanks for sharing this tribute to a city we love and the special magic of light it imbues to its visitors.
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Thank you, Giulio!
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