Day Nine & PPAC: Botanical Garden Corsini 1.

This botanical garden in Porto Ercole in the south of Tuscany is full of ghosts and now art too. My poem is about that.

Today we look at the pictures first and the NaPoWriMo poem will follow.

Orto botanico Corsini is the botanical garden in Porto Ercole some 20 minutes from me. Last August I visited it for the first time with my visiting uncle upon learning that it hosts various art pieces next to some really old trees.

Technically this is not public art – which Marsha gathers for her challenge – since you have to pay a little something to enter, but explain that to the trees. It’s free for them.

Here are just a few glimpses of and around the art piece, actually two, which touched me the most. But we rushed on too quickly, with our small guided tour. I would linger. More art from here will follow in the weeks to come.

Find the short poem after the short gallery.

You can see the Porto Ercole port from the path. I was often there and never knew of this botanical garden.

“… the earth itself to the edge of / oblivion. Total destruction can be / averted and a change for / the good of all men / may be made, but it / will require selfless intelligence / and cooperative energetic work”

Two boys with animals.

One has a bird.

“In our forest / part divine / and makes her heart palpitate / wild and tame are one. / What a delicious sound!”

The other has a deer. I found them so touching.

Marzia Gandini: Boy with Deer, 2021. Jesmonite.

Prompt 9: “Because it’s a Saturday, I thought I’d try a prompt that asks you to write in a specific form – the nonet! A nonet has nine lines. The first line has nine syllables, the second has eight, and so on until you get to the last line, which has just one syllable.“

My nonet has the same title as the last sculpture above by Marzia Gandini. As an added quirk, all my words are monosyllabic.

Boy with deer

Chin up in a small wood by the sea,
full of past, old trees and now art.
Look at your friend with the bird.
So much love where palms still
bleed from war long gone.
A new one now.
Chin up. You’ve 
got a 
deer.

Remains of RAF flybys in WW2 in the same botanical garden.

For Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC) hosted by Marsha at Always Write

The last day in my NaPoWriMo history

2018: Little big things

You little white pebble, you small brook,
you crooked tree branch, a good book.

A shell in your pocket, a rosemary twig,
a favourite sentence, nothing that big.

Who only thinks big and dreams even bigger,
must not be too bummed when little things wiggle

away from his life, so he’s alone when he dies,
since nothing worth keeping was found the right size. 

2019: Things that are irreversible

It doesn’t end there.
More irreversible things:

The ripening process.
The smartening process.
The emboldening.  
The consolidation of
the me-ne-frega stance.

Self-esteem blossomed.
Knowledge of all sorts gained.
Lands visited.
Poems read.
Books read.
People encountered.
Maybe even made.
Plants sown, planted. (Read all.) 

2020: My door poem that got me featured the next day.

2021: Nothing to like here

- Start the virus
- lock them up in human reserves
- kill sex drive
- reduce sperm count 
- wait.

Signed: Planet

This day in my blogging history

• 2014: When you try something you’ve never done before, you’re no better at it than a baby. There’s no reason to expect more from yourself than you would expect from a baby. —Reblogged via Be Friends with Failure.

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  2014: Failure is relative

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  2014: We are three now and this is as three as we’ll ever get.

• 2014: No matter how much you feed the wolf, he keeps looking at the forest. —Ilse Lehiste

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  2014: Ikea forest branch office

• 

  2015: As Tuscany as it gets. In search of light in Val d’Orcia.

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  2016: Chess in Piran

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  2017: Quadruple security