I was the first Fellow to occupy Barbagianni…the owl’s nest room with its extraordinary views out of each of the turret’s four windows: the castle grounds from one, and from the other three: combed farm fields with rolled and packed haystacks, a Lebanon cedar and cypresses, the town of Umbertide spread in the valley, white houses with terracotta tiles.  Once, walking along the narrow walkway to my room, I heard fireworks in the distance and stood for a moment to watch them crackle and burst over a distant mountain village. A private viewing, for the next morning I asked, and no, no one else had seen them, heard them.  Was it a dream only?

It seems all a dream, one I do not want to wake from: the birds swooping by my windows, the sound of night dogs barking.  The walks: to Serra Partucci tower, fields of sunflowers, olive trees, silver leaves shimmering…the breeze, a couple lying in the olive grove–we’ve disturbed their love-making–we pretend not to see, they to be seen.   I want to store these views, these scents, the sunlight in patches along my walkway…

During my stay at Civitella Ranieri I worked to complete my third book of stories, Meat Eaters & Plant Eaters.  I wrote new stories and revised older ones. Inspired by this place and my Fellow artists, I also wrote several essays and prose poems, forms I do not usually work in.

Wild Plums

            Sometimes a great sadness settled in.  There seemed little hope of ever actually meeting him.  Perhaps, some years down the road, they’d share a meal somewhere: in a crowded pub or an outdoor restaurant.

            She reminded herself not to want more than that.  Desire would only drown her. 

            On a walk some distance from the castle she’d discovered wild plums.  A single tree offered up its branches, its fruit no larger than grapes or green olives, not much plumper than the pit they carried. She bit into one and the sweet tang of its flesh spread through her, wakening her very being.