Hot Flash Friday=Poems from Italy

Last Friday I wrote about poetry books sitting on my shelf, and how the titles themselves lend inspiration. I have a book titled Poems from Italy by R. H. Bowden.

From what I can find online he was something of a literary dabbler. He wrote plays, poetry, fiction as well as nonfiction. He and his wife often traveled and loved to vacation in Italy where they often walked the hills of Tuscany and Umbria. He has one poem, “In the Umbrian Mountains Above Gubbio” an area I have also explored. Another poem is “To Italy at Fifty.” These poems are basically travel notes, observations, the kind of thing all of us (or at least think about) jot down. In the midst of a journey, when we are looking with fresh eyes, we are keen to make comparisons, contrasts—we leave the analytical for later. In retrospect we can make generalizations or judgments, but in the moment it is best just to get things down.

Just like how we take pictures. We photograph something and think, Later I’ll get prints made. Yet they stay on our phone, in the cloud without us ever acting upon them.

In the fall many of us take a weekend or an overnight or even a day trip to an orchard, a drive out into the country. Take pen and paper, a notebook with you and write a paragraph, sketches of the scenery, who you are with, the color of the sky, the relief to be away.

Write now.

aerial lifts, little cages that take you to the top of Mt. Ubaldo

 

 

this pic of me was actually taken while on Mt. Ubaldo, in the mountains above Gubbio