lockdown nostalgia
i awoke in a remembered mist
where tomorrow has opened its wings
lines of another border written
on the darkness separating men
from their offspring
in the shy light falling from the
dew of captive flowers
her face, mine
the unbroken faith
of a child sleeping too far away
so distant from me
from my devotion to truth
and her
the typewriter
it is midday at the beach
i am ten years old
the boy playing next to me
is digging out sand to build one more sloping castle
and he shouts mama!
he has found something
and he keeps digging and shouting
a black grape-looking object emerges from the wet sand
and then a cylinder and circles as big as coins
with mud encrusted in-between them
it’s a typewriter! the boy shouts
and digs faster and faster
until the rusted machine
is brought to the surface
a bunch of strangers surround him
two cops rush in as well
they take the typewriter away
the hero boy receives a round of applause
a free ice cream from the cops
i watch him basking in his glory
and i head unimpressed
toward the sea
the next day his face is on the
front page of the local newspaper
under the headline
trovata in spiaggia macchina da scrivere appartenuta a hemingway*
who is this hemingway? i ask myself
and i think of the boy
and the applauses
and the ice cream he got
for finding a typewriter owned
by an unheard-of dude
blasé i head
toward the sea
10 years later
i am in the same town
reading old hem’s short stories
in the park named after him
he lived here in 1954
and he loved the lagoon
the reeds the sea
pine forests
and hunting wild ducks
along the river
i wonder if some of the
stories i am reading
spilled out of that typewriter
and why the fuck
he dumped it at the beach
two steps away from me
and my glory
and my front page picture
and my applauses
and my ice cream
* typewriter which belonged to hemingway found at the beach