Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante

Sometimes, in a hill town like Orveito or Assisi, one can believe for whole moments in the possibility of a life with wings. Here, in this city of the river valley, stolid and beautiful as it is, no creature but a bird could ever lift up of its own accord, circle once the bell tower of the Badia Fiorentina, where Dante used to look longingly at Beatrice during Mass, and fly away. Nonetheless, however much or little it matters, I am writing this in a small notebook covered with tentative brown wings, touched only slightly by a single feather of blue here and there, every one of them laid down by the hands of the printer Giulio Giannini. It is now late afternoon in Florence, and my head is full of wings.

"In the City without Wings"
Gibbons Ruark

photo of Freiburg, Germany