Laguna Palace, Mestre

The cold huddles us together.
Don’t just stand there, says the instructor,
shoot something. Hesitantly,
we spread like crumbs
in the piazza. Manual cameras
whirr around the fountain.
One forages among windows
of buildings for the perfect angle.
Another freezes a view
of dozing boats.
The sky blooms
a Marghera smog—
so red it looks like the roof
of a mouth. We keep our voices down.
We ask ourselves,
Which whale is this?