Lost & Found

In Maastricht

I found myself last spring,
walking the streets of Maastricht
past crumbling city walls
and churches-turned-nightclubs,
on cobblestone,
menacing crags to my thin boot heels
not made for touring
old world cities.
I carefully took each step
from fear that my heel might snap,
might wedge itself between two sharp stones.

And yet how I delighted
in feeling like that boot-heel split,
separated from the duty
of wife and mother,
wandering unfamiliar streets,
without knowing
where I’ll sleep that night.

How I tingled and shivered
with his hand’s warm touch
on the small of my back,
directing me through the streets of his youth,
to The Take Five, to Heaven,
where small Brandt beer glasses
cheer, “Proost!”
and skunky-sweet red-haired buds
await us in a smoky haze,
through the caverns below Mount St. Pieter,
dank and unnatural limestone
that sheltered persecuted lives,
in the second world war.
They now shelter the self I found there.

Not a year gone by
and I’m charting my return
to the city on the Maas,
hoping to get lost again
like my boot heel
in the low mortar between the cobbled stones,
the cavernous maze hiding beneath,
in the shudder and tingle of a lover’s touch,
in the identity I must lose
to find myself again.