At the Casa de Rebolfe

Singly.

Spiralling down a plumb-line of gravity
a polished leaf

descends from the orange tree.

We talk. Read books.

Beyond
the tamed and passive Douro dreams
reflecting on her reedy glass
all she consumed; a drowned geography
of farms once hoed,
homesteads and terraced vineyards,
olive groves, that drop to where
her turbulent original
spumed over granite in the valley cleft.

We talk. Read books.
Cherish the shade.

A dragonfly settles,
measures a turquoise inch of time
between grass-blade and grass-blade
as if in time, he could measure all of it,
afternoon by sultry afternoon
under the planetary oranges.
 


Douro – A river flowing W from N central Spain, it forms part of the border between Spain and Portugal before entering the Atlantic Ocean at Oporto.