Cinque Terre

Between the train's long slide and the sun ricocheting off the sea, anyone would have fallen silent in those words, the language of age in her face, the birds cawing over the broken earth, gathering near its stones and chapel doors. In the marina, the sea and its bones have grown smaller. Though the tide is out, it is not the tide nor the feathers nor the cat that jumps into the street, the dust lifting with each wing and disappearing. The rust- colored sheets that wrap the sails of ships, I don't know their name nor the way to say lips of water in Italian and mean this:  an old woman stood by the tracks until his hand stopped waving.