Chiaroscuro Spring time

That was the season I couldn’t think or write indoors,

the garrulous springtime every strophe,

every felicitous story’s pulse

could only be crafted in tranquil cloisters,

illuminating belvederes, or rambling villas.

Luckily, it was an unbridled spring,

all immoderate daisies and sunlit pediments,

a bustling April, May, and June that engendered

boyish safaris and burgeoning wonder.

From my morning pages—

unhampered writing designed

as a treasure trove for the mind—

I grasped, like a low-key Sherlock,

a post-winter mystery:

my own offhand fascination

with rampant shadows and reigning light.

It gave me telltale pleasure to contemplate

the marigold blaze and lampblack elements

of myriad Roman landscapes,

and I revered, from my galvanizing bedroom balcony,

“The Mother Church of the World,”

the fascinating shadows of phenomenal saints

on San Giovanni in Laterano’s facade—

As I mused on how meticulously

Renaissance painters rendered light,

depth, and dimension

in an elected Florentine scenario,

I also recalled Chekhov’s imperative:

Don’t tell me the moon is shining;

show me the glint of light

on broken  glass—

Finally, my shadow and sunray odyssey

spurred me to study Caravaggio’s Narcissus,

chiaroscuro in which the lake bank gazer

with rolled-up linen sleeves,

the lithe woodland god, can’t be dislodged

from the inkwell beauty of the dark water

cradling his spellbinding, iridescent reflection:

And how he kisses the deceitful fount;

and how he thrusts his arms to catch the neck

that’s pictured in the middle of  the stream!—

I have brash Caravaggio, Baroque necromancer,

condemned-to-die brawler, masterful

aerialist of battling craft and savagery

to instruct my curious, firsthand soul,

how, in this contrapuntal,

spectacular Roman spring,

so help me,

the thicket-black shadow of my upwelling joy

deepens my joy.