The Brooklyn Rail

The mountains converse with the sky
as though intoning from earth’s core.
The cemetery becomes a road to an unheard
sound, and morning asks for permission to pass
through our windows, so that olive grove
in Umbria is a sacred prediction.

A fog melted the views. Hammocklike webs
backlit by sunlight spread across
the countryside, a thousand flying spirits,
and roadside shrines readied for believers,
those camera-aiming tourists.

You have stopped looking critically
at the conceptual question of your death
and have nothing monumental to say
about the priest in dark robes flogging
on that scenic drive to his epic devotion.

You keep this same eye on a terrace
where the moon tunnels through branches
of a black locust which holds
the fine art of your subjectivity.