Bull Affronty

Lenzi Family Tomb with Ghiberti Sculpture c. 1400
Chiesa d’Ognissanti (All Saints Church)
Florence, Italy

bull bold in relief

my herald device

an ancestral metaphor

signaling valor virility

power and strength

cast in renaissance

bronze by Ghiberti

emblazons the

tombs of my blood

esteemed histories

sleeping beneath

sacred marble and

inside my bones

antecedents who

animate parts of me

courtiers soldiers

aristocrat merchants

genetically honest

entrusted with

Medici business and

moreso with papal

judicial appointments

as Florentine

gonfaloniers

the laudable grains

of their character

legacies heired

through the sift

and the strain of

ensued generations

depositing pieces

that yielded

whatever in me

was once brave

or might once

have been noble

(Note to Readers: Having spent many years researching my family genealogy, I was able to trace my patronymic line to the 1300s in Florence, Italy. Here I located the renaissance Lenzi Palace and found the Lenzi family tombs in the Church of Santa Maria Novella and in the much older Church of All Saints.)