Nostalgia's Delusion - a poem

 written on June 18th in Split, Croatia

We buy sliced Prosciutto di Palma. I ask that it
be cut paper thin. The clerk looks at me like
I have two heads. We add 200 gr.
of salami for his effort.

The 'formaggio' lady hands out fine
slices of cheese while we
wait. She gestures with a sharp
cutting tool, "Questo motto"?

"No. Too much. Half", I indicate, using my
hand like a knife. Her grimace seems to
say, "After all those tastes"! She probably
overcharges us.

A woman, quite rotund, resembles the
peaches she sells. I touch. She watches. I pinch. She
scowls. I already handled ten peaches.
 "Two please", I say unapologetically.

She has a knijption. Calls to her cohort at
the next stall and bad-mouths me in Croatian.
I buy three peaches. "Hey, I'm representing the U.S.  
One more peach for a "Greater America"?

I move on selecting a bunch of large, ripe, red cherry
tomatoes, on the vine. An easy purchase. I
thought of ways to annoy this vendor, but
could not come up with any.

The bus schedule indicates an 11:30 departure. Ten minutes
prior we are first on. By the time the bus takes off
it's full. Mostly young people who are going to the beach...
as we are.

Kasjuni Beach faces due South. Private yachts dot
the shore. Our chaise loungers lay in the arcing sun's
path from morning to near sunset.
Umbrellas offer respit.

A young man photographs his stunning, scantily
suited girlfriend, who, posing like an internationally
recognized 'mermaid' model, impels me to
divert my gaze: from e-book to g-string.

I wonder why I am still so easily
distractible. Is her allure a rationale of
fading sexuality? Is manhood's manifest mandate I
be above such things?

I make claim to, "perfecting the
art of immaturity" - a sardonic truth and
mild embarrassment. Then, my wife discovers a
quote by Thomas Henry Huxley:

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of
childhood into maturity." Is it possible that this female
form and my 'genius' are somehow related?
Evolutionarily? Biologically?

What is that 'spirit' still breathing within
me? Am I to suppress its essence - neither
obsessive or serendipitous? Am I "carrying the spirit" or
confessing fertility's fading force?

No doubt I am frail from fecundity, as a glimpse can
readily relapse to reconnaissance, and physical
beauty become a flittering fixation. Ah youth! Your vigor
dwells in nostalgia's delusion.