Across the courtyard I spied her

Her red mane of hair falling

across broad shoulders

She stood before the stove

Her over-sized Tee shirt

slipping off her right shoulder

and riding, enticingly, up her left hip

She was oblivious to any onlooker

as she dipped her fingers into the pot

she pulled up a big bundle

of “straw and hay” as the

Italians would have it.

A great fistful of pasta,

and then threw her head back;

that great red mane of hers

flowing down

She dropped the pasta

into her mouth

I longed, in that moment,

to be that pasta

to have that final moment

to know where I would go

to go into her throat

I still miss that

now