Sandy Solomon: Three Pines

From a house in L’Aguiole, France,
built in 1911 by a farmer, later a
decorated sapeur-pompier in the Great War

.

Casement swung wide to receive the full

moon and temperate air, I hang at the sill

to see a roil of silver fog that slurs

across the fields where by day the honey-

colored cattle graze beside a distant

stand of oaks, now all reduced to grays.

Across the field, three silhouettes range

as if three sisters rushed from evening chores

to the old stone farmhouse their father built,

their hands holding their long skirts high,

their feet already lost in fog, one close,

one far, one in between, coming in a rush.

But the mist expands, rising to erase the furthest

shape and gray the second, the gray growing,

blanching, the further form losing edge.

What remains is a hint of two shapes, only;

then just one, the closest, and it, too, fading

as mist stirs and churns, steadily advancing.

I’m afraid I’ll lose the closest tree, as if

all history, all self might vanish with it.

I’ve spent so many days alone in this place,

silence overtaking sense.  But the fog

shifts, slowly recedes. The second grays

then blackens; the third returns; and finally

the stand of oaks that lines the field’s rim,

until all seems as before:  moon in a clear

sky, field of mist, three pines ranging forward,

(pines the farmer planted before he enlisted),

and the frame he planed and placed for this view, to which

he came, unbearably changed, after his war.

Copyright 2017 Sandy Solomon