The view from Narni, Umbria, overlooking the Nera River valley
Was it only last Sunday we were here in the hill town of Narni? And wrote our next to last poem based on postcards with images taken from space of our solar system and stars and constellations hundreds of light years away. The challenge: to write a poem that connects the the far-away images to specific moments or images from here in Umbria.
We read our poems together a few hours after we returned to La Romita before our poetry reading that evening. For the reading the twelve of us picked a favorite poem from the more than ten poems we each wrote during the retreat.
Here’s my poem written in Narni last Sunday based on the image of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex:
Rhu Ophiuchi Cloud Complex 360 Light Years Away. Photo Credit Widenfield.
Postcard Poem – Narni, Italy, June 30th, 2019
If he could hear the difference between the sound of loneliness and the hush at the heart of silence would he be changed? And the sounds
of stars forming, if they could be heard here from Rho Ophiuchi, light years away, what would a man hear in the Chiesa Santa Maria Impensole? Would the carved columns wake to their earliest memories or is there only silence inside the dust of a star forming, only silence inside the compressions of stone? The silence of this place on a Sunday broken by bells pealing, the growl of a small dog and a man, breathing.
Richard Osler, Unpublished, 2019