“Olive Trees” for April 15, 2019

Olive Trees
 
Gift, we are told, of Owl-eyed Athena,
she of the gaze like sun-polished steel,

but I think always of soft Italy,
the countryside greening in early spring.
 
I recall those powerfully stunted trunks
rising from earth that still-cool day in March,
 
trees ringing the walls circling a hill town.
Monteriggioni—aloof, untaken—
 
had inspired Dante, served as his blueprint
for impregnable Hell’s ninth rung. Our car
 
was banned, but entry was easy for us,
seeking lunch at a famed restaurant. Doves
 
roosted in the stone chill of the entrance:
cooing, dropping feathers, lime, wisps of straw.
 
Forsythia spiked golden against church stones.
Cobbles rang. We heard noon bells. Soon, Easter
 
would arrive. We ate light egg pasta, sipped
dark red local wine marked authentically
 
with black rooster-marks of true Chianti.
The stripped-bare restroom offered elegant
 
austerity, just a hole in the floor
with two stone footprints—welcome suggestions
 
for the slightly befuddled foreign guest—
paper, and a tiny basin, a latch
 
on the door. Needs must and not a thing more.
Refreshed, cleansed, we passed back through the ancient
 
opening, returned to our winding road.
Descending on foot. we paused to glance back:
 
fourteen linked towers against the sky, soft
white flowers, fresh, resting on glaucous points.
 
The storied olive’s silver-blue-green leaves
made fluttering pennants near the car park.
  
Leslie Schultz

			

3 thoughts on ““Olive Trees” for April 15, 2019

  1. Sigh. You capture the beauty and the darkness of Italy so well through the tangled branches of the olive tree. At least it reminded me of our time in Italy and all we saw and learned.

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