Diego Valeri, born in Piove di Sacco (Padua), wrote Albero in 1887. It is from the collection of poems called Terzo tempo, 1959.

Here, Valeri masterfully depicts nature in vibrant strokes: the chiaroscuro of the sauntering sky with its “great blocks drawing flames and shade”; the breaking sea with its waves “against the fleeting dunes”. Everything is in motion, except, in the midst of it all, a tree: “enclosed in its pure contour”.

It stands immobile, like a spectator on the threshold: the solitary tree observes nature “without batting a leaf”, the passing light and dark, the wind, the waves, and the dunes until night, the “trapasso”, the demise of the day.

Two quatrains make up this brief poem: the first is ABBA in assonant rhyme, and the second CDDC in rhyme. We can also observe alliteration, consonance, similes, and tropes.

Picture, mine: sky in motion over Lake Ontario.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0