other people’s postcards

and the problems you carried from home but
with new hats in the shop they said you
must visit after something muttered
about the mountain air some vista or

chirps back and forth in brightening dark cold coffee

though later and once the music mercifully
stopped and after the little chapel was
broken down and the beams
turned into pens for disappointed
tourists the sound of the little fountain
carried us
away

if we knew where we might go the precious
shell the shadow inside