Forgetting the flower, Salis brushed the leaves and twigs from the place where her foot had fallen. She found a single branch of what was apparently root. The portion of the root that rose enough from the earth to be uncovered was as wide as she was tall, but she did not know how much further in width it went below the surface.

The root brought her thinking to the tree, which she discovered easily, it being at least as strange as the large, hollow root. The great tree stood about twenty yards away, leafless but budding. It was the start of autumn when she left her house and she looked around to be certain it still was: all the other trees were in their various expected declines into Fall, but this one. She could not know but this tree was in fact always in a state of budding — always blooming, never bloomed.

What can I say for the trees of grieving —
These in the spring that flower ere leaving?
Early they come to blossom for us
Who in the winter are spring-sighing thus:

"How long must we wait — the grey is hard-born —
For colors we love in brightness of morn?
The seasons are cycles of forgetting all
The things we remember in spring and in fall.

Saplings in meadows will try to be grass,
Dancingly limber, unhindered by mass,
But quickly must learn the lesson of be,
When, time moving forward, they find they are tree.

Grasses have glory in litheness of bole,
Perfect in concert their bowing and soul,
Girls running fingers through waving gold heads,
And nearness of presence to Chloris's beds.

But spring does not abruptly come.
It waffles with the winter some.
Like an epiphany slow-dawning,
It wakens with a stuttered yawning.
Do not expect a sudden pop
Of color green, or leafy top,
Or meadow bloomed, or forest groomed,
Or winter doomed, or cold entombed,
But gradual return from grey.
So listen closely what I say,
And to my former promise cling:
There will be, oh tree, a spring!


April 5th, 2010

Orange pools of liver-flavored grease floated in warm, just-boiled milk among dry cereal Os. Wonderful woman! She worked so hard to satisfy the tastes of her American guest! For breakfast, dry cereal with milk had been the plan. But she had only one pot, and I assume there was some restriction on the quantity of water she and her son could consume because of the presence of the aforementioned floats and that she had used this pot the night before to prepare her special dish: a cringingly delicious and plentiful combination of pig livers and pig-liver gravy. My tears well at the thought! It was so much an honor for me to stay under her roof that she insisted I refrain, during the meal, from drinking anything in her home, until she had retrieved from the piaţa a soda by her own hand. Have I told you how great a beverage a soda can be? A few times in my life I have supped a soda that became on my tongue Ambrosia. I believe the myth — it has prolonged my life. Bread too becomes the Bread of Life when you have it with Romanian liver gravy. After my second-birth by soda, the boy — the only one in the flat who spoke English — hurried me out to the piaţa to see if I could find any food to rival his mother's in flavor. I did not.

I'll forever remember the family that took me in,
Brought me closer to heaven than I've ever been,
Fed me pig livers and warm liver milk,
Made me wait for the soda that swallowed like silk!