The willows gate
I’ve been through these willows a thousand times. It was when I saw the picture on the monitor that the title emerged. It is only a symbolic fact: it concerns only me who gave a name to this passage along the path. And now, I feel that there is a before and an after as if I were crossing a border. Sometimes I must come back and cross it again, so as not to stay abroad all the time. It’s just a mental construction, but it can end up seriously conditioning me. And nature has nothing to do with it.
Last night I wrote this poem on the subject:
The willows gate
I called “portal” a gate along a path in the peat bog…
Huge soaring willows, thick with tiny leaves.
And there was a round trip entirely made up in my mind:
this way there was a land, that way – as if it were different – another one and foreigner,
I hadn’t really noticed it before, and I never thought about it.
I took a picture of myself once when I was crossing that threshold.
The sun was rising from the limestone cliffs of the terebinths;
as if phosphorescent golden pollen was hovering in the air;
as if the ether were glass, and I saw through everything spruce and clean.
I understood that it was a gate: in the photo, I noticed the black behind me
as opposed to the amber colour that emanated around my skin…
and I couldn’t tell if it was just a reflection or an efflux of my own.
That picture was just a shot: it must have written about how many milliseconds
and still lingers, fixed by lithium, in the silicon of memory.
And even today that light told me something new, something that I did notice before.
The light of dawn has told me more, and I continue to see more.
It is not the invented word (portal) that has created a substance,
but it’s the brightness that adds more and more to the light.
Thoughts come to me from things, the way light shows them,
filtered light from above makes things precious to me, willows and even me.
Do I really look so different in the morning light?
I can’t say with complete words how different I am nor how much more.
It’s enough, it’s a lot: I don’t know how to say, nor how thoughts understand.
Will it be like that when we take the big step? Will we see ourselves enlightened by dawn?
That threshold of the willows is still there: it comforts me to pass by it every day.
Isn’t this cool, that we have a dedicated poet on Naktiv?
It most certainly is Richard.
🙂
What a super photo Vittorio, but haven’t you forgotten your fig leaf or something to cover your penis? I’m only joking! I admire you for posting beautiful photos of the male naked body! Keep it up!
Yes amazing photos : )
Thank you. I’ve only just picked up your comment. I do try to make my photos attractive, however the subject is getting old and it shows! I don’t know about you but I just love this sunshine which allows me go abhout the house and garden completely naked. Sometimes , and much to the wife’s annoyance (she’s against nudism) I get a lovely erection!
@augustusjohn Please refrain from constant sexual remarks on this site, read the rules. Thanks.