A baking day in August hoping to encounter life’s purest.
The car parked with difficulty.
The hot walk as a tourist.
The air car fumed and gritty.

Then through the doorway, now no longer rushed.
Into the cool of the Basilica Di Santa Chiara.
Now all is hushed.
To seek sainthood’s tiara.

We descended the stairs into the church’s cavity.
To pause awhile before the tomb.
To wonder at this radical attachment to poverty.
Here now, but not in life was she in gloom.

We emerge again in not too much haste.
And join the tourists in a welcome gelato taste.