A Poem about being in Italy called Banana Skins

In Italy I can be my future.

In New Zealand I am my past

until my youngest grows.

In NZ I am a woman

in a business jacket

& smart shoes.

A woman concerned with

sales call rates

& paying bills.

A woman who fits her writing

into gaps

& in the end surrenders

her hunger to write.

It is too hard to give it

the air it needs.

A woman who eats biscuits dunked in tea

trying to feel full.

A woman who serves 4 mouths,

does several loads of laundry every day.

A woman who shouts about

lunchboxes left in school bags

from the day before

with a banana skin still inside.

In Italy I can be me.

I can look in wide eyed wonder.

I can meet just my needs.

I wear black jeans.

In Italy I am concerned

with looking & feeling

the sky, the breeze, a sculpture.

Writing flows.

To feel full in Italy

I don’t seek biscuits

but to notice:

take the metro,

buy a peach from a stand,

to enter the Pantheon

& look up. It fills me

Satisfies.

In Italy I shout with passion

both joy & madness.

Never about Banana skins.