memories of stone pine

i think to the old world, poor and scorned

they were right to leave — back then, of course

to a faraway future that beckoned before

the tyrrhenian sea and its shimmering shores.

war-torn seekers drifted forth—

the roots of their land, once adored,

rot in their pockets, waterlogged,

dead by the time the atlantic was crossed.

"this is la bella vita" they said of their dreams,

pointing at drying machines, model homes pristine;

"this is the future" so they were told,

and at the time, it made sense to go.

in search of true north strong & free,

they fled home. our home—

but i can say nothing

of hurt.

because now

i am fleeing too.

restlessness runs in the body like spilled blood.

cypress trees line the motherland bastion.

they, the combatants, stand firm

between flame and firmament they shoot

upwards, onwards—

i stare at them and remember

they are mine,

these army green boughs.

and the snow-seasoned alpine tips

chill me from afar, those peaks—

how they beg to be known

and the red of the sunset here

is my blood-shade of red,

the same red as the flag's.

i rent a car

to test drive my inheritance,

the sights cradling themselves

in my breast.

i walk the roads they climbed,

sit in pews they prayed in,

breathe the same plumes

of pastoral air.

i learn the body can recognize itself

mapped and burrowed into

the mountains of molise,

the abbeys of abruzzo.

the earth here knows me

even if its people don't.

departure is an act of severance, yes. but

some things severed can be

restored.

in the up-down tension between

memory and yearning

i am myself here, in the end, tall

like the stone pines of my mother nation.

i am a flailing branch

gesturing downward,

trying to fall

through the trunk

and back to the soil

that made me.

i find the roots.

they have kept their shape.

i will return them now

to the hollowed-out soil

they were born in.