In Venice With John Singer Sargent Poem by June Webster

Let me wander with you around La Serenissima,
discover how sunlight reflections illuminate edifices,

create columns.How brush strokes spatter flashes
of colour across the paper to bring to life

the structure of a school, a palace or a home,
where a flight of steps descends onto a canal,

to a moored boat that will take us to contemplate
Palazzo Grimani, the Ducale at Piazza San Marco,

then visit the much-depicted Madonna Della Salute,
dome prominent in this day of pure artistic rapture.

Paint me in a gondola, not in bluish black, in a gossamer
skirt of paper white, folds in fine line washes of purple,

while I lay back and allow my hand to immerse
into your watercolour suffusion of lagoon spray,

so real I'm sure it will be damp when I raise it
to shake yours for the pleasure of knowing you.