Ode to Civitella
Follow the winding road
into the long-ago story
of enchantment.
Before sunrise, heed
the rooster free
of our introspective frowns,
nourished
by the song he crows.
Feel the morning
mist like a blessing
stroke the harmony of wheat,
sunflowers heavy
in contemplation,
your eyelids.
Yield
to the spell.
Hear fingers
dancing on black and white keys
as if possessed
by a duende,
a voice leaping
on the old, red roof tiles
pirouette on the turrets;
brushes and pens
playing in the pages
of silence that undulates
like the hills.
Watch the camera’s dark
eye convert the castle’s stones,
massive as our doubts,
into loaves of bread,
pasta into long, tangled dreams,
time into wine.
Assaggia. Taste.