a beautiful campaign

(an Italian Sonnet)

“I think you are a beautiful campaign,”
he said to us, this boy from Italy,
as we explained how we had come to be—
an Italian, German, and American,
three girls who’d met as students on exchange

and under an Australian sun had schemed
to trade goodbye for the next lazy season,
our plan traced eagerly into the sand.

We fashioned a collective map of homes
and homes away from homes with open doors
connected by a path to be explored.
First marks on where we’d soon return alone:
a city, small for Germany, near Koln,
a farm on shores of Lake Superior,
a white Stucco in Brecsia, (north of Florence).
Then Lisbon, Canada, Sicily, Rome...

Land circled. Money saved, to execute.
We named our first adventure with a date
and talked of it so often it became
a mantra: Summer 2002.
That summer we would meet in Bonn and prove
the smallness of the world by conquering
Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, Italia

(at least the north), and Salzburg too.

He said campaign and we assumed he meant
“a company,” or group, not like the sort
of military term once used in France,
translated “open country”: Armies spent
the winter in the comfort of their quarters
and in the summer took to the campagne.