Paolo

Looking through the fence, through the carefully pruned and tied up climbing roses which just now are sprouting new red shoots, to where there should have been sown rows of favas already dark green and leggy between the mounds of grey artichokes, and likely the last of last autumn’s fat ruffled cabbages alongside slim feathery bulbs of fennel, but instead, finding dry patches of weeds and a shovel propped against the stone wall at the far end of the garden, comes an understanding, belatedly, of that which earlier in the morning, from the church down in the piazza, was an unscheduled long ringing of bells.

First published March 6, 2020