Longing

End of April. Plane trees – platanus hispanica – are now sailing along in the clear morning light. Horse chestnut-trees and paulownias have reached the peak of their beauty.

The time of the euphorbia has passed. The time of the wisteria is drawing to an end.

 

(Euphorbia near Pernety, purple wisteria in Rue des Thermopyles, white wisteria in my street)

In the gardens, bind weed is awakening : awe.
Ivy-leaved toadflax finds its way in small cracks in the pavements, and is now flowering : joy.

Over the Channel, in my small Canterbury garden, are the peonies in full bloom ? Have the Siberian irises come to grow and thrive ? Or did the Kentish summer draught bring their young shoots down ? Voices too thin to carry over the sea, however strong the wind.

Longing for silence and light
to the swift morning breeze
I commend my desire –
may it fly 
to Southern shores where grow
their hearts and mine alike
plane trees
vast as a summer sky

How I now fear that my parents will leave the Mediterranean town I have come to call home.

That one could dwell under mountains born by the sea, among rocks and flora interwoven in an unmistakable treasure of light, that one could walk paths of thyme and rosemary in a landscape of limestone beauty, and envisage to leave them is beyond me.

To the great pines standing still under the Summer halt, and whispering in the evening breeze, that one could say farewell ?

Pine trees on Cap-Brun

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