A new poem by Martin Plantinga: Between Jobs at Il Palagio

Between Jobs at Il Palagio

At the point between work and leisure,

rote hours retain their claim in the body,

and will not yet be shed:

they live in the bone, as a signature

of what was necessary this past year and more.

Flip-flop-shod,

without anything particular to do,

I keep appointment with the vineyard path,

walking the patterns of the olive shade,

the ancient curves of Tuscany

the best the world has come up with,

my sole calendar the mountain’s tracery.

Toil had this missing in its addictions.

Toil took me away from…what exactly?

Now a cockerel screams,

and renders me leftwards-turning,

towards a portion of what I’ve needed –

and which I so suddenly see,

it is as if I never held a job nor will again:

indiscriminate wildflower, poppy and daisy,

bank-grasses –

and most of all, the wind playing in all that,

incarnate, and whipping the light,

or the light catching it, just ever so slightly,

in the gaps between the flowers,

and the heart quickening its pace

at something it’s seen, and knows again,

having not known this in so long –

that there is a kind of bell that hides in nature,

which we’re meant to hear, and even obey,

and I move on, a new role triggered within

which shall keep me busy

this side of things being tethered to the temporal.