To Dad

Years go by and on the platform of the tramway that you took, wild herbs grow,
but the walls of this house still release the breaths of your presence.
Milan is always grey like that day when you let yourself go to a new life,
and it blooms every spring of light.
The years pass, yes, but the progress of your steps is still present beyond the door.
The city changes, it is erased and rewritten on the sidewalks that followed your young steps,
six decades have passed since your childhood that you didn’t even remember,
period engraved in your solitude.
Today, like yesterday, machines raise doors and windows to the sky,
erasing all the smallest traces of those meadows, where,
perhaps,
one day,
you ran after a ball.
What about that serious child who looks at the world through a photograph with soft colors?
Little adult terrified of everything, did you grow up?
Where are you now?
Are you hiding among the cars parked on the tracks of the tramway that no longer passes?
Are you suspended between the notes of a young Austrian composer whom I no longer listen to?
Also,
or maybe.
No,
You are in my heart,
in my mind,
in my eyes that flow on the Milanese traffic looking for
your figure as a man who is always young.
In every moment of this strange and wonderful life I will be able to recall in myself
your warm embrace.
you will always be with me,
Big Daddy,
even if you are now flying to the farthest clouds from the sky.

Milan, 10th of October, 2013