Foggy Feelings

Foggy Feelings

I always get lucky when I travel.  While I was visiting friends in Orvieto recently, their friends called to invite us to Sunday lunch.  The hosts had been gifted a whole thigh of wild boar (Cinghiale) and wanted to share it with some friends.  Luckily, I happened to be in town, so they also invited some other American friends who now live in Orvieto, to balance the native English vs Italian speakers.  We loaded up and drove down to the countryside in Umbria.  The hosts live in a marvelous, beautifully restored little villa with scrumptious views of the rolling hill sides of Umbria, complete with vineyards, Medieval towers, the ubiquitous Cypress trees that line the driveway – everything BUT a view of Orvieto.  Two large trees block the view of the lovely Etruscan town of Orvieto, and its gorgeous cathedral (or duomo) with a post Renaissance façade.  Much of the greeting, the grand tour and the get-to-know-you chit chat centered around lamenting the lack of Orvieto in the view. I, however, was delighted with the view just exactly as it appeared.  The dining room is located along a long glass wall, so that we all had the immense pleasure of the “bella vista” while we dined.

 The meal was wonderful, the company exceptional.  Despite the fast flying Italian dialects all around me, I managed to keep up and understood much more than I anticipated.  After the meal, it was show-time as the hosts had just returned from a vacation abroad to India and the Maldives Islands.  We ooohed and aaahhed and laughed on cue at charming photos and listened to their remarkable travel tales.  All the while, an evening fog slowly crept into the valleys of Umbria.  By the time we finished our five hour pranzo (lunch), the view was misty with multi-color grays mixed among the greens, and evening lamps began to appear throughout the charming country side.  I found myself enchanted.  Full of fabulous food, heart-warming connections and locally made red wine, I fell in love with fog. Its creeping, its mysterious shaping of our human eye, as visions appear and roll like clouds, as dusk pervades the very roots of my soul.  The farm houses, the villas, the vineyards – all took on a romantic quality like love scenes in the rain at the movies.  It made me long for a handsome man to hold my hand, a sister to tell my secrets to, a lover to steam up the windows even more…  I found myself nostalgic for things that had never been.  How can it be that we miss what we have never had?  Perhaps the idea of former lives is not so foreign, not so incredulous.  I remember writing a poem entitled Nostalgia once, while sitting in Central Park soaking up the muted colors of the Fall.

NOSTALGIA

As the first frost fades

My Indian Summer dawns
I relish the rays of sun
that speak to me
as I journey toward my second home
in Central Park.

…

Kaleidoscopes of autumn leaves

swirl in funnels of sprinkles
wind-dropped atop the "Imagine" shrine
reflected in my eyes
blowing out the candle of Lennon's dreams
and doing him homage
all the same
with their diversity of hues.

 Creation thinks it’s spring.

The wildflower bursts of hope

swell the teardrops in my eyes
as the crinkling death of summer
neath my feet
crunches me toward winter
and the absence of my Solar friend.

…

This brief return of June

cruelly beams you into me.
I cannot help but lose my breath
and briefly sink into the quicksand
of our memories.

©2012 DOS

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