Cerasuolo is an Italian village in the province of Isernia, Molise

 (a feline variation on a literary theme)

They call to each in turn
at village end.
She-cat black-fluff begins
“MIAOWR!”
Tail rolled up,
a suggestive curl.
“MIAOWR!” “MIAOWR!”
at each step taken.

Then comes the echo
“GWIAOWR!” “GWIAOWR!”
“MIAOWR!” “MIAOWR!” The reply.
“GWIAOR!!” insistent now.

A white tom
bounds out of bush and copse
stage right.....Heathcliff calling!
Feline fur prickling
she – Cath-ee – black tail curling
arrives ahead at their rendezvous
where purr-paw passion will ensue.

She rolls over
paws reaching out
turning to claws
he circles with intent
HE is Heathcliff not Clark Kent!

“MIAOWR!”
“GWIAOR!!”

And he – that big white tom -
leaps and straddles the recumbant
she-cat
playing tom-tom with the thrum of his tum

He straddles and thrusts
thrusts and straddles
he bites her ear then her neck
Still is this Cath-ee until

“MIAOWR!”
She shrugs him off
from whence he came
a Heathcliff undone
an eclipse on fun
Of him and it, she's having none, that's it!
No, no more, that big white tom's way
of wooing to deplore.

But wait....what's this?
There's more and more of 'it' in store......
That big white tom leaps up again
straddles the back of black fluffy Cath-ee
and thrusts and thrusts
thirsts for more and more
then - at last – she's still
lying there until....

“MIAOWR!”
She shrugs him off
and is done with that kind of fun. Oh! (Italianate)

So Heathcliff departs
defeated champion
of the procreative arts
till that time
when she'll call again
“MIAOWR!” (“HEATHCLIFF!”)
and he'll reply
“GWIAOWR!” (“CATH-EE!”)

Black fluff  White tom
Cath-ee  Heathcliff
entwined and entwinned
that loved-up paired-up couple
that'll never be binned.

(Cerasuolo, Molise in May 2021)

What's that smell? Why
It's the smell of the countryside after the rain
                                                                        had fallen.
It's the smell of autumn before winter
And after summer
That smell of pine and fir
Oak and allder
                        A cavalcade of colour
Unfurling at each footfall.

Enthralled at the arboreal beauty
The countryside walker stops to admire
To capture the moment
At the press of a round dot on a small screen
And presses again then again until
Seven Molisano Monets appear in the blink of an eye
Captured for the principle of posterity
That such handsets demand. Every man his own Monet
We wish!

Through that ravine of many rustic hues
I notice the slip-slide
Of subsidence after the cyclonic monsoon
The day before
For that walker past the mosaic of fallen timber is me
Placing myself in the sure hands of nature
Placing myself, a tiny blip in this landscape
Of brown soil and green pasture, in a timeless tread
Through an unchanging world where one becomes
Many in the patchwork of transition. A transition
'Twixt and 'tween Borgo rurale Cerasuolo a Borgo
Quasi singolare Mennella – the former 62 inhabitants
The latter 6 inhabitants.

And in the 'latter' there are imprints of toil
Left to fester in this desolate place as ugly suppurations
On the visceral beauty offered by the changing seasons.
Gradations of yellow, orange, red, brown, maroon
Alternate with multiple shades of green and permanent sepia
Root, branch, leaf splendour at the persistence of nature
In survivng the hand of man at each change of seasons.
Watching it all unfolding from the place where there was
A platform for an *ill-starred event. Here, I am struck
By the resiliance and brilliance of nature
By sonorous signals sent out by birds on the wing
That all is well with their world (or is it?)

Here the habitat appears unchanging, senses engaged tell us
That this is so, but the eye, ear and nose – those senses of seduction
Brought by the messenger of seasonal shift tell stories
Of contrast, two sides to every story, bird song mixed
With the machinery of movement by wheel and engine,
The pleasing odours of dew and wildflower
Contrasting with ruinous woodsmoke and rotting rifiuti
Dumped into gorges and left as the Mark of Cain
In this place of gifts, and the sights of mountain and forest,
Water course and copse swirl into a vortex of concrete carbuncles,
Structures started but never finished like a half-eaten meal
Left at table. Here, the rough, often very rough, must be taken
With the smooth, it is taken as read, like our need
For a stomach to be well-fed.

I turn to be free of Mennella and head for home,
Thoughts swirling and birling round in my head
Like cement in its circular mixer.
Thoughts theme tuned via the bleats of goats
In need of milking; and the sight of great white sheep
Dogs at each turn in the overgrown path at the end of which
There is the wag of the tail that is both welcome and warning.

In this place, contrast is all.


NOTES:
Cerasuolo and Mennella are small Molisani settlements within the Parco Nazionale Abruzzo, Molise and Lazio.
Borgo rurale -rural small settlement
Quasi singolare – literally 'almost one.'
*Ill-starred event – The annual Mario Lanza Festival in August.
Rifiuti -refuse, garbage.

Tail intact – unlike many – it watches me with a wary eye,
a reptile 'cricket umpire' ready to give me out and scamper off
like most of its species.
But I am going nowhere and neither is he.
So we watch – each other – a stand-off.
And I think of those times prehistoric
when roles were reversed.
I would be the cowering, quivering one
wondering over my fate. He would be
the salivating, gloating one wondering
whether to dwell over my impending state.

Now there he is sizing up a cherry-stone, downscaling personified
 – the trait of evolution intensified.
Thence follows the ballad of the lizard and the cherry-stone,
the wall eye of that reptile sizing up the nutritional value
of fleshy remains around that stone.
First, there is the stalking – is this stone friend or foe?
Is there a surprise in store?
The approach cautious. What if the inanimate should be animate?
The whiplash tongue extends, so begins the means to an end, a stone
stripped of its nutritional embers in a contest that's attritional.
But between the animate and inanimate only one winner can there be.
The lizard retreats, the stone cleansed, nothing left to portend.
But in the blink of a lizardy eye he is back for 'afters', head cocked
in scrutiny, tongue extending and extending then licking clockwise
anti-clockwise, a cleaner in disguise!
In a moment, the stone is gleaming, skinheaded, flesh shredded,
this cherry is now a stone and of no interest, just 'skin and bone'
detritus to be disposed of. So, I wait for for the exit of sated lizard,
but what's this? Exit abated? First, there is the tongue to clean,
so this lizard runs the edge of its inner pink serration upon the ledge
of the patio perimeter wall, the stone the means to a cleansing end
that is as alien to us as a mosquito without the taste for blood.
Only then does this cherry-loving lizard take the sheer gradient
of this wall in its stride as its means of escape. The stone?
I flick it with my fingernail into the undergrowth where a tree
will spring up to commemorate that day a lizard took its tongue
to a cherry-stone in a small mountain place in Italy and licked it bare
without a care as it spleneticised its way back from whence it came...satisfied.