Every day I pass a maple tree.
I may be going to class, to Sarah's, to anywhere in Florence.
But I pass this same tree everyday.
As I walk down Via della Colonna, this tree stands alone at the very end, just before the piazza. It is in a gated garden and hangs over the better part of the street.
It is one of those trees that cannot be missed. When I walk, I always seem to be walking towards the tree. I can see it as soon as I leave my apartment door, and when I return home, it offers me welcome as a turn the piazza's corner and head back down my street.
It is a beautiful tree, almost perfectly shaped, like a bell. It was one of the first things of my neighborhood that I noticed when I first moved in to my apartment. I can remember walking past the piazza with both of my suitcases in tow, and first seeing the wonderful tree that overhangs the street. It is really just a normal maple tree, but the way that it's permanence that it possesses in this place is relayed to me each time I pass it makes it more than a simple tree.
I have seen beautiful, breathtaking things in Firenze, and my time here is not yet spent. I have time still to pass my beautiful tree, my beckoning symbol for the beauty in store for me as I walk these famous streets. It will be gently calling me each time I walk past it, urging me on, asking me to pass it and see whatever wonder I had planned that day.
It is almost winter now, and the tree knows this as much as I do. When I arrived, the tree was lush and full of green leaves, pleading with me to discover the city for whose gates it keeps. I did listen to my tree, I have seen Firenze and Italy in earnest, and I cannot voice a regret.
As I have said, though, my time is not yet up, and the tree knows this too. It's leaves have changed, turning a soft yellow, and falling gently each day. Now I walk past these leaves gathered in bunches against the walls, counting my time here in their places. I can pick up a leaf and remember a day I've been here, or look at them all on the ground and smile at their simple golden beauty.
There are leaves on the tree still. They wait for me to pass before they fall, and then they do, one by one, counting with me as I try desperately to slow time. But I walk by that tree every day, and there is at least one more leaf added to the pile. Soon I will be able to count the leaves on the tree, and those will fall too fast. When the last leaf falls and winter is arrived, I will take a passed leaf from the pile and place it in my pocket. I will keep the leaf and when I look at it, it will remind me of the pile that sits in the same place where they all fell, remind me of all my time spent in this indescribable place. When I am far away from my tree, when I can no longer turn and walk towards its welcoming branches, this leaf with remind me of each day's passage and each day's entrance, past my tree of welcome, into the place that has changed my life, the city of my dreams.
No comments:
Post a Comment