The high hills’ song I hear
As I drive on;
Through Tuscany
Amid the fields of green
For it’s been hours, we’ve
Been up since dawn;
That melody
Has drawn us, unforeseen
To ancient places, things,
A distant past:
A harmony
Of nature, and of wine —
The song of the high hills
We hear at last —
Eternally
On ecstasy
To dine
The way that I imagined this
We’d be in Italy
And when the proper moment came
I’d get down on one knee
And I would ask you if you would
And you’s say (crying) “Yes.”
But something happened to my dream
That I could not have guessed
I wrote a story in my head
Of how all this would go
But you did something else, instead
When you said “no” – just “no”
I drove one day through Florence
And I saw an ancient tower
Constructed first from stone
By (I assumed) some Tuscan power
Active in fabled days of old
When empire had fallen;
And now, this aging structure left
Shot through with summer Pollen
And rhapsodized on foreign scenes
The matchless panorama:
Then realized that I drove that day
In Florence, Alabama
