The steps are blunt

Picture by Luigi Scuderi

The steps are blunt,
closed, muffled.
You conceal my gestures,
make them almost clumsy
a little silly.
I was used to
shrewd and thoughtful gestures
now I struggle to adjust,
snow, snow of Rome.
You have turned the city
into a fantasy world
because it is all a whiteness
that seems taken straight
from a child’s imagination. 

See? You fall and confuse,
your reality exceeds
my imagination
and you confuse my smiles,
my memories and all my
gestures,
and render them simple,
unpredictable.
A smile escapes me
but a white finger falls from the sky
and coldly presses against my lips.

You force naivety
upon a young man
that the weather down here
is already sculpting,
where you're falling,
as if by magic,
transforming
time into a white feather,
my years into a beat of wings,
and who knows, perhaps,
you, snow
will be a trace
of those angels
hidden somewhere
here on the Trinità dei Monti
where the footsteps of my life
fall lightly.