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