So much has happened in 2025 that it’s hard to believe my trip to Portugal was this same year… I wrote this in March, upon my return from an awesome vacation. (Oh, and there’s an error in the video - I said it was 2005, but it really was 2025!!!)
Soul Math
by Nikki Starcat Shields
This is day five of our vacation
And I’ve already fallen deeply in love
With this City of Seven Hills.
We meander through the slick streets,
Umbrellas unfolded, laughing to ourselves.
We come upon a familiar square.
A feeling stops me in my tracks:
I’ve been here before, and will be again.
Two days ago, yes, when we caught the tram
And I took that picture of the moon
High above the poet’s monument.
Two centuries ago, my poet’s soul
Sat, smoking, at the sidewalk cafe,
Entertaining notions of freedom and revolution.
Two years from now, I return again,
On a train tour through Europe,
Scribbling my prose in lavender notebooks.
Two decades hence, I bring my grandchildren,
Sharing with them the joys, the beauty,
Of this city of my heart.
Two millennia ago, so distant in misty memory,
Yet also recent, I walked slowly past, composing verses
For recitation in the nearby Roman theatre.
The one we saw three days ago,
Now an archeological dig site,
Nestled in a neighborhood of the old city.
This place, this city, this square, this moment point
Between ordinary space and time,
Etched onto my mind’s eye.
Sacred geometry
In tiles and stone and glowing lights.
The muses dance.
The math adds up.
We live inside the sacred now,
Bits of time unfolding as it will,
Numberless yet remembered, somehow.
The soul drawn inexorably forth,
Resounding, like the metal church bell,
Throughout the aeons.
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