Coast Live Oak
By Robert Savino Oventile
January 15, 2023
January 15, 2023
Blue sky and gray mountains for background, a rust-red patch of buckwheat crowning a ridge as
foreground, and in the middle ground, among ocean-born mists, thick trunked and heavy
branched, an oak stands sunlit, green leaves shining.
Calipers and triangle (measure, linearity), galleon and mission (colonization, conversion), fish
and cow (aquaculture, agriculture), stars and bandshell (visual, audio): all encircle a woman
offering a basket of nothing discernible as acorns.
The photo and the seal attend to the day, keep the horizon steady, smooth history into a sequence
rolling from then to now to tomorrow. Both lull the eye and pacify the mind. Regardless, each
remains distinct in the moment of transition it obscures.
In Austria, on the Danube, aboard a yacht, seated at dinner, chewing Black Angus, feeling jet
lag, and scrolling pics, you remember to text the coast live oak to your sister for her to show your
parents, born when Okjökull existed, living on after Okjökull’s gone.
Animated, a mammoth treads the valley. In silent black and white, reaching into a cache woven
of willow sprouts and covered with pine boughs, a hand draws out acorns, as done when
mammoths had long been a memory for song to pass down.
foreground, and in the middle ground, among ocean-born mists, thick trunked and heavy
branched, an oak stands sunlit, green leaves shining.
Calipers and triangle (measure, linearity), galleon and mission (colonization, conversion), fish
and cow (aquaculture, agriculture), stars and bandshell (visual, audio): all encircle a woman
offering a basket of nothing discernible as acorns.
The photo and the seal attend to the day, keep the horizon steady, smooth history into a sequence
rolling from then to now to tomorrow. Both lull the eye and pacify the mind. Regardless, each
remains distinct in the moment of transition it obscures.
In Austria, on the Danube, aboard a yacht, seated at dinner, chewing Black Angus, feeling jet
lag, and scrolling pics, you remember to text the coast live oak to your sister for her to show your
parents, born when Okjökull existed, living on after Okjökull’s gone.
Animated, a mammoth treads the valley. In silent black and white, reaching into a cache woven
of willow sprouts and covered with pine boughs, a hand draws out acorns, as done when
mammoths had long been a memory for song to pass down.
Robert Savino Oventile has published essays and book reviews in Postmodern Culture, Jacket, symplokē, and The Chicago Quarterly Review, among other journals. His poetry has appeared in The New Delta Review, Upstairs at Duroc, and The Denver Quarterly. He is coauthor with Sandy Florian of Sophia Lethe Talks Doxodox Down (Atmosphere, 2021). He can be found on Twitter @rsoventile.