Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes Page A

allure—something I've never been able to articulate for myself, something I've never seen or read, out of all the books and images of Venice. What is it?
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    Only a few hours northeast of Cortona we are entering a different spring. People with seasonal allergies must go mad here. If we park the car for an hour, we find it covered with yellow, sticky pollen. Whorls of airy white puffs blow across the windshield and tractors spume dust in the fields. Breezes send clouds of gold dust from the pines' white candles and cones. The new green of leaves and crops seems to reflect in the air, giving it a watery tinge; we are driving through an aquarium light.
    Near the port of Chioggia, south of Venice, the land turns marshy. Reedy shores wave and blur into water. I always have loved the smell of marshes. My early summers were spent on the Georgia sea islands, still one of my favorite landscapes. Grasses growing out of the sea. Land that is tidal, the slick creatures of both land and water, the thrill of what looked like a log suddenly coming alive and opening hilarious jaws. A salty, iodine, rotting, fresh smell signaled summer and freedom. Packed in the Oldsmobile with my two sisters, Willie Bell, records, toys, clothes, and my mother (my father was driven separately by an employee so as to avoid our chaos), I leaned out the window like a dog, my hair springing into curls, waiting for the first scent. No one seem enchanted in the least when I began to quote the Georgia poet Sidney Lanier's “The Marshes of Glynn,” which we were forced to memorize in endless stanzas in the fifth grade. I imitated the declamatory style of my teacher Miss Lake:
    As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God.

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies

In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and
the skies:

By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:

Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within

The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
    â€œCan't you make her stop,” my sister said. She was turning down page corners in
Mademoiselle,
already planning her clothes for college in the fall. Louder, I shouted:
    How still the plains of the waters be!

The tide is in his ecstasy.

The tide is at his highest height:

And it is night.
    I loved that chopped-off last line. My other sister remembered that the Marshes of Glynn ran red with blood in some war. My mother began to sing “You Are My Sunshine,” which I hated. I rolled down the window again and let the smell wash my face until we entered the sulphur stink of the paper mills.
    Marshes, islands, lagoons—the smell of old landscapes where water will have its way. These marshes, too, probably have run red with blood from time to time. Those Doges of Venice did not govern with peace in mind. Chioggia doesn't rate much mention in the guides. We take to it immediately as a racy, working-class version of Venice. Like its elegant cousin, Chioggia stands on low land with canals and medieval rabbit-warren
vicoli,
narrow streets, leading to arching footbridges. Flag-bright colors of fishing boats repeat in the waters. People crowd the wide main street's cafés and shops. The decline of the birth rate currently experienced in Italy must not apply here. Out for afternoon shopping, many young women push strollers, sometimes with two tiny children in tandem. I hope they rotate who's first in the stroller. I would hate for my first world view to be the back of my little brother's head. Fish restaurants cluster near the harbor. How fresh can fish get? We see a man carrying two buckets, fish on top still flapping their tails. Lines of bright laundry string across canals: yellow-striped towels, turquoise blouse, red pants, flowered sheets, quite colossal bras, and a few sad pairs of graying panties. Through