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  • Writer's pictureWILLIAM HAZEL

This Italian Night



sparrows remain unseen though

their voices surround through the lemon

trees and the olive tops, the lollipop pines

bees on gardenias unminding of their songs

calling for the fall of this Italian night

 

a peregrine hovers in bay given headwind

eyeing for wall lizards cooling on stone

five centuries laid facing Capri in

the yawning shade of Vesuvius’ shadow

where I pause in this darkening between

 

on a raft of awareness hollowed

of chestnut secured with vines pulled

from time crawled scrawls dimming

black from green as orange burns red

of a sun drifting behind Isola d'Ischia's shoulder

 

downing cooling diffuses of wild aromatics  

of fennel and or-e-gano overcoming citrus late

for harvest in family hands tending this land since

the time of pirates and kings desperate for reign

over a timelessness ever evading vain

 

attempts to own as I pretend the same

in a ship built of wanderlust and want

to be oceans away from borders and deadlines

dead in desire drowning creative flames so let

me be captured and given to this black

 

now bright in Napoli light slow

swelling across the slow bluing horizon promising

with these evanescent hours at least a place

to rest without thinking or need or want or greed

in this Italian night









1. Photos by author.



© Copyright William Hazel, 2024


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