Stefano always swore

Rimbaud was right —

anything is possible

if you can taste it.

 

Stefano said colors

speak in different voices,

sounds have shapes

you can smear on canvas.

 

You can mold a tremolo

with your bare hands,

grab a base note by its wings

out of a breeze.

 

Imagine, Stefano wondered,

if platitudes marched

in perfect formation over bluffs

to the bottom of the sea.

 

What if you could chant

a pyramid of old Egypt ,

tango with turquoise

above a mountaintop?

 

What a feeling, Stefano laughed,

if octaves blossomed all at once —

to spin them on a fingertip

and inhale their vibrations.

 

And when the ocean guzzled

the soprano avalanche,

melting it to bronze,

the sea foam whistled twice.

 

I woke just then in that cabana

where I’d dreamed Stefano’s eyes,

eyes that always knew a symphony

once they spotted one.

 

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