Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore, Verona

A chubby fist and wing
float free, severed
from the landscape of human affairs.


Below, a barefoot saint
seems to straddle acres, beaming
casual self-possession, the divine


right to stake eternal claim—but
in the space between
both legs, a third intrudes,


last remnant of a man fading
to white dust. Nine hundred years ago
this wall was his. Reduced


to a toehold, he now spites
the fourteenth-century arriviste,
holding his ground with the ghost


of what he was. The saint remains
oblivious. Centuries sweep
around him like planets' rings;


the church's wheel-of-fortune
spins rose light
through plague and war.


Yet so vivid
are his blue and russet robes,
he glistens—a refugee


from a sun shower
who's arrived dripping wet, an idea
fresh from the brush of his maker.