In memory, Paolo Bruscoli, 1935-2021
I think it was you,
that sturdy confident young man
on the Mediterranean
who kept on almost coming back
through sixty years of dreams.
I asked the waitress
in that pier café
if she’d seen you,
she answered with riddles.
We barely knew each other
that week of backpacks and bicycles,
met by chance with a common goal,
Barcelona.
When the plague came to Italy
I wrote to ask
if you were still there
and here you were suddenly
with your news
your memoir of growing up
in wartime, hardships and dangers
I hadn’t known about.
Your wife sent her own
to my wife and me,
your son, an essay on running
for my son who ran marathons.
I had in my hands
your family lexicon.
You gently mocked my passion—
remembered— for strange languages.
A friendship was reborn.
After we re-connected
I no longer searched in dreams
for that young man
who perhaps was you.
The notes I made for my next email
are waiting on the table.
Instead I send you this,
kind road companion,
colleague,
older brother.
