Santa Fiora, Tuscany — August 16, 2024

Santa Fiora, August 16th. I came down off the hill in the late afternoon and the festival ground was still empty — a white circle of stage on damp grass, dark banners reading Santa Fiora in Musica, the trees crowding in like an audience that arrived early. I drank a small espresso at a cobbled table, folded paper wrapper on the saucer, and walked into the Peschiera. That's the thing here, the thing worth carrying home: the town built itself around a spring. Cold water from the Monte Amiata volcano rises here and fills these long stone basins, and the trout drift through them like slow gray thoughts. So I stand there with my hands in my pockets. A red mirrored sphere floats on the water, doubling the sky. By evening the second basin had gone glassy, an island of reeds at its center, the bell tower and a thin moon held upside down on the surface. A town that decided, a long time ago, that its center would be water you could see through. I keep thinking about that.