Venetian Glasses

Six Venetian glasses
standing in the china cabinet
while life flows around them.
Too precious to use, to perhaps
be broken like other wine
glasses at gatherings of
twenty and thirty somethings.

An aura of Venetian shops
full of rainbow coloured
glassware, glass etched with
gold and silver suffuses these
six wine glasses, an aura of
gentle lighting reflecting a
myriad  of softly frosted
droplets of shop lighting.

They recall shimmering sunny
days with twenty something
friends on our big OE,
roaming Venetian canals and
bridges, eating Mediterranean
food outdoors on leafy piazzas.

Six Venetian wine glasses
gold rimmed, delicately etched
patterns in tiny squares now
dulled, still delighting with the
memories they carry, of times
when youth’s chances were
lived to their fullest.