Tuscany: and the lay of the land...

This is a third poem about my particular experiences in Tuscany, Italy. During the early 1990's there was a growing concern on the part of the local farmers that foreigners were gradually buying up the precious land. Tuscany had become a desired vacation destination and many of the foreigners didn't know, nor care to know, how to cultivate their properties. This writing speaks to this issue;


To The Last Contadini
(Sempre Lavoro)

"Sempre lavoro..." always work...
wakes with the rool of the rooster’s rhyme.
Stoic fissures on their faces,
reflections of the toil with terra
under a sun unrelenting.

In these supple Tuscan hills
the farmer’s skills
have culled the land, cajoled her and
cared for her. Anonymous names– blown in the wind–
Fosco... Alba...Sarafino...
have formed their plots
in olive, vineyard and grainy lots.

...As countless years before; this was the way,
to work the land, the aroma of manure,
the distant echo of a tractor, the organized
dishevelment of the working farm.

There is a smell of change
in the wind that has no season,
that knows nothing of the seasons.

Unlike any pest or virus that the contadino
can confront, this foreign intrusion is swiping
their land, not to cultivate–
but to manicure and postulate.

These sweet hills are in danger, and may
sour– turn bitter– like fruit that goes unpicked,
a rooster’s crow that no one rises to,
even become brittle;
a sunburnt tractor in an unturned, weed-choked field,
a shrine and antique to some,
in reality– a sad anacronum.