my tiny sandaled feet, muddy from tromping through trails
overgrown with cool spring mosses and knee high grass,
discovering broken stone sculptures and Etruscan lounge chairs,
carried me to an old tree growing by an abandoned convent
in La Maremma, Toscana.
and this tree
he called to me.
he said,
sweet girl,
sit on my sun bleached wooden swing.
if I can carry the weight of seven hundred years
in my gnarly roots and dry crackling branches,
I can carry all forty six kilos of you.
all the weight of your heart,
all the mass of your blood and bones and
stallion black hair.
nettle sting biting my calf skin,
twisted rope burning my palms,
I launched back with swift steps
and swung forward into the sunhot air,
laughing at the motion of going nowhere.
