Wheeling Through Tuscany, by Patricia Young

Last night both children dreamed

they flew to the same foreign country,

and the planes they travelled on

were so poorly constructed

they could look down between their feet

and see the world pass beneath them.

They woke broken-

hearted, longing to go back.

And their faces were uncertain

as though haunted by what they could now

only imagine--fields of sunflowers

and cyclamen. They stared

at the cereal soggy in their bowls and said,

it was green there, really green.

And what I want to know is

should we book a flight today, should we

travel to Tuscany now the children’s inner lives

have spilled like Chianti into ours.

Small packs on our backs

should we rent bicycles and pedal

into that wet-grape darkness?

From “What I Remember From My Time On Earth” by Patricia Young (Anansi: 68 pp., $16.95) Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.