Imago

Palazzo Lenzi
Located on Piazza Ognissanti in Florence, Italy
Photo from wikipedia.org

they were neighbors of Dante
my great great great somethings
the line of my name drawn
through Renaissance intrigues
businessmen courtiers bred
to the Medici culture of gracing
the vulgate with panoply art the
esthetical speech of deep beauty
skilled hands pulled from hearts
and keen minds pulled from souls
making resonant visions of parables
sculpted on canvas in verse that
inspired and adorned common lives
of industrious faithful the sandal
shod congregants moved to pray
dreams that gave rise to Il Duomo

I often see grandpa Tommaso
in aubergine Florentine robes
holding court with DaVinci and
young Michelangelo mists of
illusion I hold in my mind for this
hard driving entrepreneur of
an ancestral blood that compelled
him to paint all his ceilings at home
allegorical scenes of that era removed
by five centuries half a peninsula
bringing the splendor that woke up
the mind of a dark aged world to his
casa famiglia tucked humbly among
mountains just east of Naples
the birthplace from which Papa
later would leave to discover America