“In the stillness of the sundial,
time whispers its secrets.”

Curved lines and arches of thought,
Domed moments and vaulted meanings,
Sculptured language, light and shadow,
Twirling colonnades of connotation—
Suspended between dream and memory,
Like a line of poetry drawn across violin strings,
Painted beside a faded rose, reflected on glass.
Your verse, a harpsichord gliding
Along velvet stairs and mirrored salons,
The Baroque colliding with the modern—
Though the grandeur of your vision,
Like a sundial in a Sicilian garden,
Remains rooted to the wisdom of your land.

Author’s Note

Lucio Piccolo (1901–1969), Baron of Calanovella, was a Sicilian poet whose richly
textured, baroque verse evokes the decaying grandeur and dreamlike atmosphere of his
native land. He was the first cousin of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of The
Leopard. In fact, it was Piccolo’s late literary debut and subsequent recognition that
inspired Lampedusa to begin writing his only novel. The two shared a deep affinity for
European literature—especially Proust—and a melancholic sensibility rooted in the
fading world of the Sicilian aristocracy. This poem is a tribute to Piccolo’s ornate and
elusive style, which remains suspended between memory and myth.

Doesn’t just happen when sleeping and dreaming.
What stirs the leaves when there’s no wind?
What stands up the tall grasses?
Why do seeds float in timelessness?
Why can light appear like shimmering water?
Why, when we are well,
do we almost disappear into joy,
And the body sometimes feels
Like it’s floating on a cushion of air?
But maybe everything is wind—
the light, the clouds, the earth itself,
rotating in its weightless orbit.
Ah, it’s change that’s weightless. Problem solved.

Cottonwoods tell me water is near,
they catch the wind in their crowns.
Cottonwood seeds have started flying—
there are snowflakes in my eyes
and dreams on my eyelids.

What casts more shade,
umbrellas of the earth?
What leaves are yours
that add more stars to the sky?
What seeds are yours
that fly with their own parachutes?
What boats are yours,
that they float on my streams?

I stood beside “the standing one,”
who connects earth to the heavens—
tree of the sun, tree of life.
Why do I feel, standing under you,
like I’m returning
to the garden of my soul,
where we all belong to each other.

In my dream, I woke to a new world,
to Passiflora incarnata.
I was walking among meadows.
They were like aliens of the flower realm,
their coronas like suns within suns,
and a universe expanding inside.
They are the passion of Christ,
with their own crowns of thorns,
and all but Judas present in the bloom.

I woke to a purple sky,
and a sword-billed hummingbird
feeding on the nectar of the Andean sun.
I was holding the Holy Grail,
and many came to hear me speak
about love and charity.
Then I was alone with my father,
and the flower put me to sleep
like a snowfall in eternity.

The meadow was a flowering Mahabharata:
Behold, O Bhima, this unearthly flower.
Within it is the very source of dreams;
within it is the very source of justice.
But why, in our violent times,
are all your warriors asleep?
How can goodness sleep in flames?”

I woke a third time in a passionflower daze.
The world was unchanged,
but I saw it for what it was,
and I smiled at the fleetingness of beauty.

Rotting food and rotting children
The rot of the heart
And decomposition of spirit
The oxidation of conscience
Microbes consume us
If there are rotting children
In the world
It is because spirit is starving
For a solution
That is beyond itself

There was a poet Salvatore Ala
Who tried to engrave his name
In the hardest substance known to poets.
The effort wore him down —
His body failed — but not before
One last desperate cut,
Carving alA — a mirror of the name
That made and unmade him.

I surrender to the three-legged sun
rushing round the earth
so fast I can’t keep up.

I surrender to the triskelion
tattooed on my shoulder
and to the sunset of my life.

One day there will be no more of me,
neither bone nor ash will remain,
not a strand of hair.

But these flowers will flower
with my love woven into their fabric
and they shall be my eyes in a blind world.

The fig leaves will return
with my courage and spirit
caught in their wind and shaking their hands.

The three-legged sun will return
running up the hill, like sunrise,
and I’ll be home again.

for Josie, Phil, Jordan, and Rowan

All the people turn to face the band—
talkers fall silent, glasses pause in air,
even despondent spirits lift,
even the serving staff are grooving.

The band is so into the music
they don’t notice the audience
drawing closer to the unseen fire.

Some nights the flame reveals itself,
rising bright and clear,
lighting a way for the lost and troubled.

After the show, the audience leaves happy—
they carry a spark of that fire home
to keep the night alive inside them.

What’s brighter than a Baltimore oriole
On a sycamore tree,
Brighter than a blue jay in a white birch,
Brighter than a goldfinch through a dogwood,
Brighter even than a cardinal in a cottonwood,
Sunset, singing through the branches–
Holding the last note, like a gloriole,
Like a shimmer across the stillness of thought.

Every day when I look
both inward and outward
at my own eternity,

I know I must be drifting free.

I can’t remember the port I left from,
nor see the far shore that holds me.