Paula Harris

a life with a view

i woke up this morning
and decided i'm moving
to tuscany

i'm moving to tuscany
to own a vineyard
that stretches out as far
as the sunset
and to live in a villa
that sees all of this

i'm moving to tuscany
to make beautiful wines,
although i don't drink
myself,
that will be acclaimed
worldwide

i'm moving to tuscany
where I'll master the language
in a day,
at most,
after all
i do have some italian blood

i'm moving to tuscany
where each day
i'll walk to the farmers' market
holding a cane basket in the crook
of my arm
buying produce to supplement
my own gardens of vegetables
fruit and herbs

i'm moving to tuscany
to host dinner parties
that people will scramble
to be invited to,
indulging in delectable conversation
and food to match

i'm moving to tuscany
to meet beautiful mediterranean men
and to take them all
as lovers
one at a time
or in groups

i'm moving to tuscany
to eat crostini
for brunch each day
with prosciutto sliced too thick,
and i'll even learn to like
cannellini beans
once i'm in tuscany

First published in Turbine 2 (2002)

Paula Harris

About Paula

Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps a lot, because that's what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award, and was a semi-finalist for the 2020 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She was the recipient of a Vermont Studio Center writing residency in 2018.

Her poetry has been published in various journals, including Passages North, Barren, New Ohio Review, SWWIM, Gulf Coast, The Spinoff, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook and Aotearotica. Her essays have been published in The Sun, Passages North, The Spinoff and Headlands: New Stories of Anxiety (Victoria University Press).

She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes and hoarding fabric.