While this poem was taking shape in my mind, it was conceived actually as a text message, I fell downhill on the steep path, I rolled head down really, not very far from the place which is the title of the poem. I scratched my knees, wrists, chin and I tasted a mouthful of brown earth while falling with my mouth slightly open for the surprise of finding myself sliding, cruising, so thoroughly on the trecherous gravel. I woke up from the poem's "trance" at once.
Well, only some bruising, nothing more. I was glad when I stood up that it was nothing more serious.
And in a way it was a plunge back into my childhood for the knee-grazing in particular. There was an eternal redness at their centre.
As a child when you fall you have much less, almost nothing, to lose, in all senses.
MY FAVOURITE SPOT
A flat white stone in the tall grass,
a perfect shape to host my ass.
Sunlight, butterflies, oaks, cypresses,
up on the hill, here, nothing misses.
And maybe, maybe even a little bit of regret
could be ground by the cicadas' loud net.
At my feet the map of the plain,
widespread curlicues with no strain.
Sitting on my favourite spot,
where I could also allow myself
to be not.
2 comments:
Ah, the power of a fall, Davide, the endless wounds and scarring but best of all getting ourselves back onto our feet.
A tremendous poem, this. Succinct and utterly compelling.
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