Enter@Castello di Vezio

by Amy Pence

A hush when we enter the falconry—as if
               what passes for ghosts are just these forms—
                              the selves turn their tufted heads.
We hiked twenty minutes up the hillside of Varenna
               to Vezio. On the cobblestone path,
                              ancient sisters leaned together, laughed.
Bowers of roses overhang what I cannot grasp—
               time’s hot scented rosemary. Over
                              the next ridge, olive groves ripple
down to what is indigo in Lago di Como. A red-tailed hawk,
               a falcon, the great horned owl named
                              Artù. In the pools where our
eyes meet: prey, predator, a quiet so interior
               they remain just fleet & temporary housing
                              for what I may know—when
                                             I cease to know.


AMY PENCE authored the poetry collections Armor, Amour (Ninebark Press, 2012) and The Decadent Lovely (Main Street Rag, 2010). Her hybrid work on Emily Dickinson [It] Incandescent was a finalist for Tupelo Press’s Snowbound Chapbook Award and the Colorado Prize for Poetry, and her essay on Dickinson and her biographers appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle. She lives with her husband and her daughter in Carrollton, Georgia.