Sometimes I dream of that scrub pine wood
That place that teems with wind and where stood
Scraggily trees and bushes cut low
By storming seas where the salt winds blow
Across the bay and over the dune,
Wind works its way still humming its tune
With creaking pines that bend and that crack
That sound their whine, both forward and back,
Where brambles grow and where needles fall
Where time is slow and where life must stall,
As seas must storm and keep the warped tree
Bent to its form, hunchbacked by the sea,
There the trees fight by nature’s command
Looking for light and bound to the land.
Now I stand straight and I stand up tall
But at this rate someday I must fall
But scrub pines last like incorrupt bone
Through ocean’s blast they bend then atone.
If I pray, God, please let me be so
Then He might nod, as the salt winds blow.
—
Gregory Scalise ’18 is a Junior in Pforzheimer House studying Philosophy and the Classics.