This page will be mainly odd scribbles and short stories as part of my ongoing attempts at creative writing.
One rain-soaking January afternoon I made my way up the ancient stony track to greet Carlo for the last time. The sort of wet afternoon when Carlo might normally have been quietly sharpening tools in one of his many sheds tucked away in the olive groves. Today, however, he was to be the centre of attention. It was his funeral. The bells tolled, sonorously echoing across the valley through the low mist clinging to the mountainside. The villagers stopped whatever they were doing and, dressed as they were, scurried out of alleyways making their way to the church. The packed church sang with fervour and conviction, the eulogies were fulsome in their praise for Carlo’s life. My mind drifted to the many meetings with this wonderful man as I walked my Border Collie along the ancient track leading to the church in the hill-top village of Nevallo.
‘Ciao, Carlo.’
My clumsy English accented words would tumble down the hillside to the stooped figure, its black bereted head buried amongst the vegetables. Carlo would ease his back upright to reveal a creased walnut brown face, weather-beaten from decades of outdoor toil, grinning from beneath the beret,
‘Ciao Ricky, come va?’ floated up the hillside.
‘OK, grazie. Saluti a tutti a casa.’ I responded, sending greetings to his family, before he returned to his vegetables.
Carlo, in his early eighties when I first met him, was truly a man of the soil, a contadino. He had spent his life, since the end of the Second World War, providing food for the family kitchen. Tending dozens of plots carved into the steep terraced hillside he grew something for every season; vegetables, salads and fruit. Nurturing his vines for the grand picking of the grapes, the Vendemmia, in September, he produced a year’s supply of vino rosso. Then there were his olive trees, their foliage providing a silver green canopy across the Tuscan hillside. Carlo pruned, fed – and climbed them. He climbed to shake the oil-filled olives on to the nets below, until one day, at the age of 86, a branch snapped; he fell and broke a leg. From that day Carlo was grounded by his doctor, and his wife Francesca.
The service over a procession formed, led by the priest, behind the cortege. The narrow winding stone path, barely wide enough for the hearse, was packed with mourners. Our umbrellas of differing colours and shapes, but predominately the Tuscan large green canvas contadino style, provided a walking sheltered arcade. Water oozed out of the sheer black rock face on one side of the path, the low wall on the other side providing no shelter from the incessant driving rain as it swept across the valley. My shoes squelched as the pathway became a river, Carlo would have worn boots. The procession, edging slowly forward, filled the main road leading to the cemetery, forcing on-coming vehicles to halt on the verge. Misty tentacles slipped down the hillside tangling around the mourners as they approached Carlo’s final resting place. There it was. A hole in the soil, for a man of the soil.
‘Ciao Carlo’Copyright Bill Dunnakey 2010
Haiku
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry, usually in the form of a 17 on verse, about something observed and, or related to nature. In the English version on is taken as syllable (though not strictly correct) and is written as 17-syllables, in three lines of, five, seven and five syllables. Quite often, when trekking through the woods or along the high ridges, something triggers a phrase or two and I find myself trying to form a Haiku in my mind. The following are a few examples;-
Early Spring Walk
Stony track, dusty trail
Winter dried twigs snap crisply
Battifolle trekking
My Dog
Lean barking machine
Car chasing, loving, licking
Border Collie dog.
Spring
Wild hellebores, cream
Brown horned cows, bells clanging
Sunny Spring morning
And one I wrote for my daughter who had been telling about her morning run through the wooded hillsides of West Yorkshire.
Blue sky, sunlit day
Wooded trail ever upward
Solace, tea and cake.
Copyright Bill Dunnakey 2011
From my training walk on Wednesday 15th June 2011 two haiku contrasting the hillside scene.
Woodpeckers pecking
four fleet footed fawns fleeing
Valleriana morns.
Chainsaws' angry buzz
trees gone, hillside denuded
Valleriana mourns.
Copyright Bill Dunnakey 2011
Trail through the woods above Vellano
Tree felling in the woods above Vellano
No comments:
Post a Comment