Stanley Pelter: CITY OF GIFTS

not quite ready to fly
a pale dove flitters
river curve

Fancy going to Florence on Wednesday?
Where?
Florence
Where’s that?
Italy
How come?
Someone’s cancelled. I’ll square it with school.
Thanks....................................................but no thanks.
Why not?.....................................It’s only for a couple of days.
I don’t know anybody. They’re learning Italian. I’m younger than them. I’ve got lots on. .............I don’t want to.
Most are young.........very friendly.........and I’ll be with you.
She is 12........................................Square it with School.

It’s your bat mitzva
What?..............................................Can I sit by the window?
Yes
They have been friendly. She is relaxed. Flight will arrive early morning. Seems to sleep; head to one side, eyes closed. Rapid first growth of morning. Pre-sun glow spreads across a clear blue light of Florentine sky. Opens her eyes. Descent follows bridged line of river Arno. Slowly we lower. Early sun shapes all colours and hues. Luminous space of a City of Gifts is compressed. Not blinking, she looks down on an unfamiliar roofscape. I know that look.

cage glides to earth
which we watch grow large
she silent............wide eyed

Why didn’t you tell me?
There is more

Let’s walk. Go to the Accademia. Visit David
We look up at this translated marble, lit by a midday sun. A dome flows light. A frozen moment of silence dominates space a juvenile giant occupies. At first she doesn’t speak. Then . . .
Who made it? David was the small one, not the giant.
Michelangelo. He does reverse things a bit. Usual image is after their battle. Michelangelo describes that moment when a childman makes a momentous decision, enters an arena of power. One act will change his life forever. See that huge veined hand, its position, sling lifted, ready to kill. Michelangelo was a little man with a broken nose. David was his gigantic, one-man rebellion against convention, against accepted tradition. Single-handedly, this huge Italian created a spatial, a temporal shift that had a profound effect on river flows of art.
I had said too much. Said it all wrong. She says nothing. Is still looking up at this boy who would be King. After two hard years of carving, here he stands, a technical, an aesthetic marvel. Unsurpassed. Maybe those ‘Slaves’ emerging from rocks. Perhaps his ‘Pietà’. We walk away. Walk towards the Ponte Vecchio with its sparkling gold, shining silver shops, past the Uffizi, the Piazza del Duomo, to the Brancacci Chapel. Stand silently before Masaccio’s ‘The Expulsion of Adam and Eve’ and, in disbelief, ‘St Peter healing the Sick with his Shadow’. Walk. Walk in silence. Walk until the sun tires.

She puts her arm through mine like a grown up woman.

river view
see clouds in ways
that change everything
.

.

by Stanley Pelter
Claypole, Lincolnshire, England