The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live.

Breathe before it’s gone.

If we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed or of those of one race against those of another race, surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow.

• Theodore Roosevelt, 1915

…you just want to fly away.

This is how a human being can change:

there’s a worm addicted to eating grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up, call it grace, whatever, something wakes him, and he’s no longer a worm.

He’s the entire vineyard, and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy

that doesn’t need

to devour.

that New Year’s Eve
we stood on the hill 
above the vineyard
watching fireworks

rise above the lake 
from Pieve to Anghiari
later in the stillness 
of the barn the cat chasing

our shadows on the wall
a moment so full
if today we could talk 
we’d agree we had no better

earlier at the bar in Caprese 
Michelangelo we couldn’t decide 
what to drink to the new year
vin santo an old man said

holding up his glass
certo vin santo