[reprise from summer, 2023] makes me think of Tuscany

photo: man of aran, June, 2025

June 7, 2025, photo by alan girling

It’s been a few years since I last encountered my pilgrim. I like to think she’s on her way.

Pilgrimage

Eighty-six years old and still 
she can’t get over the roses. 
Each year, the solstice coming, 
she collects her camera, makes her way 
over the bridge to my neighbourhood, 
and to my garden’s gate. 

“Your house makes me think of Tuscany!” 
she declares, though she’s never been, 
and my memory flashes 
to the same gushing inflection:
       makes me think of Tuscany 
spoken at the door some fifteen years ago 
as the realtor took us room to room. 
“That would've been me,” she says. 
“It’s the way I picture it. Like Tuscany.”   

But it’s not the house she’s here for—
it’s the roses, masses planted 
before my time, like Tuscany,
several hundred at least, 
a thousand maybe, exploding 
along the path from the gate to my door, 
each one blooming a luminous white, 
a tableau of stars, and like stars, 
without significant fragrance—
a milky way blessed 
by one of its own suns.  

She snaps a photo. 
“I keep them in an album,” she says.  

Each year, she crosses the bridge, 
and each day, as the season warms 
and cools, I open my door 
to the roses. 

June, 2023