Barbara Lydecker Crane

At a Public Bath in Budapest
        
If I had shown some classic grace
    like statues all around,             
and hadn’t darted through the place,
    a maze that did confound;

if I had kept the calm of blues
    of all the patterned tiles
that lined each winding hall I’d choose,
    frantic, lost for miles;

if I had mimicked ages past
   when kings and queens would visit   
and stroll beneath high skylights’ glass
    to waters that elicit

health and equanimity —
    then I’d have skipped that slip.
Bare feet in wet proximity
    skewed left. I smacked my hip,

hard. Bruised, I sank into
    the nearest pool, divinely 
warm, and stayed until I grew
   prune-wrinkled. Finally
    
I dressed and left, sore of hip,
    but still I glowed with pride:
in Hungary I’d had a dip
    with history on my side.

Prize-winning poet Barbara Lydecker Crane’s fourth collection, You Will Remember Me, sonnets about portrait paintings in the imagined voices of artists through the centuries, was published by Able Muse Press in 2023.