pine, n. and v.

2 Minutes Read Time

A portion of the painting "The Evening Glow of a Lamp" by Suzuki Harunobu. The painting portrays two women, one sitting to the left and one standing to the right. The woman on the right is placing a light into a large lamp. The woman on the left is reading something on a piece of paper. They are both in an open house with a river in the background to the left. — Photo by Art Institute of Chicago on Unsplash

                         for the nun Ryōnen Gensō (1646–1711)

Years until you take the tonsure, years 
until I learn to learn, and I can’t stand 
to sit inside the crawl space of this word

so I’ll turn it to a window, open it to you, 
pretend it’s different when you speak it—
just the tree, a murmuring eternity,

I’ll believe our living could be like 
learning a new language, where 
every word holds just one meaning

and that’s enough. I see you,
new attendant in the empress’s chamber, 
facing a wall of golden air papered

with golden clouds, inked with a stand 
of pines: staircases to nowhere.
Tracing each branch with a finger,

remembering the boy you once heard 
breathing outside your first house 
with its walls so thin, nearly nothing

between you. Such pines. Painted
at the edge of a painted sea, seashells painted 
on the painted shore. There is always

another meaning: waiting, in your language.
Like longing’s bone with its marrow 
sucked out. There is always

a stilled verb, like the shell your finger 
has trailed down to on the wall:
all that one small life has left behind.

You press your ear to it and hear inside 
a painting of the wind.

Lindsay Stuart Hill

earned her master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Virginia, where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and many other publications. Her chapbook, One Life (2013), was published by Finishing Line Press.

Return to top of page

Search