Lingering Scent of the Divine Light

for Agnethe and Jorgen

For two minutes that felt like all of my life, after lunch
with friends on the Serena stone terrace of an

ancient farmhouse near Siena…soft syllables of voices
floating on languid Tuscan light…all my desire

to know surrendering to the hymnic drowse of Cicadas
in the long grass…all thought buried in the Bells

of Buonconvento rising from the valley below…brown-
eyed Sunflowers chasing the sun that saturates

everything in its color…the mind sliding away on
revenant waves of unbound light and the stillness

of love that multiplies the self, embracing me like
some Etruscan Deity, quelling the mad rabbit that

thrashes inside of me, and I am ready to gamble
the future on the velvet flush of Mourning Doves

from an Olive grove below until the razor cries
of keening hawks─hovering in their life of circle

and search─gave back all my years.