He’s the last one I wanted to find, that Savonarola,
even now, when my life’s blandness draws first blood
like the smooth sharp stones that scrape the soles of waders.
It is Savonarola. He finds me. We stand in mud
and look past each other at the surf
out near the curved horizon. Neither speaks
but we both know that the first who does will lose.
He wants the soul I claim I do not have,
materialism being my chosen poison.
I want a cause, not his, but one as fiery
and consuming as the flames that took his life
in Florence, when Rodrigo Borgia won.

‘How was it then?’ I ask, gasp when he bares
unfleshed teeth. He says, ‘It hurt. I won.’
He wades waist deep. I follow. Shore birds wheel
above our tracks that the flooding tide erases.
‘You may ask me where we are going,’ he appends
to his first speech. We walk further. It’s less cold
but clammier than I’d thought from books it’d be,
this seaweed-troubled water. He starts to swim
while I who have forgotten, try to float
past a giant jellyfish with tentacles that reach
between us and beyond but do not sting.
It looks like a pope we both once vaguely knew.

‘That’s my mirror fish, my fluid crystal ball,’
he says. I know to answer but have lost
my volition. I dumbly bob and roll
in the current as he leads me on and dives.
We plunge through roiled green water into mud
and through that too, through rock that melts to magma.
Less hot. Less cold. Less everything. Less life.
Savonarola stops, says, ‘Welcome to my world’
and disintegrates. I am totally alone
with the thought that I wish I had followed once in life
a cause with meaning, known a crusade’s glow.
Even Earth’s iron core cannot inflame me.

He’s the last one I wanted to find, that Savonarola,
even now, when my life’s blandness draws first blood
like the smooth sharp stones that scrape the soles of waders.
It is Savonarola. He finds me. We stand in mud
and look past each other at the surf
out near the curved horizon. Neither speaks
but we both know that the first who does will lose.
He wants the soul I claim I do not have,
materialism being my chosen poison.
I want a cause, not his, but one as fiery
and consuming as the flames that took his life
in Florence, when Rodrigo Borgia won.

‘How was it then?’ I ask, gasp when he bares
unfleshed teeth. He says, ‘It hurt. I won.’
He wades waist deep. I follow. Shore birds wheel
above our tracks that the flooding tide erases.
‘You may ask me where we are going,’ he appends
to his first speech. We walk further. It’s less cold
but clammier than I’d thought from books it’d be,
this seaweed-troubled water. He starts to swim
while I who have forgotten, try to float
past a giant jellyfish with tentacles that reach
between us and beyond but do not sting.
It looks like a pope we both once vaguely knew.

‘That’s my mirror fish, my fluid crystal ball,’
he says. I know to answer but have lost
my volition. I dumbly bob and roll
in the current as he leads me on and dives.
We plunge through roiled green water into mud
and through that too, through rock that melts to magma.
Less hot. Less cold. Less everything. Less life.
Savonarola stops, says, ‘Welcome to my world’
and disintegrates. I am totally alone
with the thought that I wish I had followed once in life
a cause with meaning, known a crusade’s glow.
Even Earth’s iron core cannot inflame me.