Phenomenal Across Italy’s Romanesque lines between Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas saints seed themselves in ploughed fields, silt with mysticism the blood of builder and artisan, dash rebellion over the crepuscular hours of the two flanking shores. They thrive on terracotta hills as wild as poppies, as persistent as weeds, their ignited souls branding the clement sky with a tirade of wings. They come of age impulsive and beautiful. A see-through grove of trees gloves a crest with a lace mitten of sun and shade. There the top branches entwine with tender silence, far, far distance nears and bequeaths humility. Magnified fragments of the world touch the heart of penitence. Animals become disciples. Light slips into satin, shows to advantage barrel-vaulted woods sheep-cropped slopes ivy niches of romance where rock admonishes in fresh trickles: “Poverty kill the flesh!” They grow old from unsolved mysteries cradling sacrifice like progeny to whom they continue to serve miracles like gelati.
Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist (Doctorate EHESS, Paris 1993), free-lance journalist, essayist and poet whose poetry recently appeared in The Deronda Review, The Comstock Review, The Mystic Blue Review, The Big Windows Review, Indefinite Space, The Plum Tree Tavern, Literary Yard, Clementine Unbound, Anti Heroin Chic, DASH, The Dawn Treader. The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson published by Adelaide Book 2020.
Amethyst Review 