Lone Pine

A mountain pine in the plains. How did it come in this unfrequented alley? How does it survive so out of place?
It towers gawkily above the rear of the building. Walk past it every morning to touch its toughness.
Its needles are dropping always. They are the sponginess you tread. A few are caught in the bark’s rigid flakes.
Gently prise them out. Release them to fall where they belong. They cover dust and flatness with the scent of resin slopes.
That arrival: a return. The car with shut windows had wound through a pine forest. At last you stood on a ridge in the blue forgotten air
through which the great trees were a dry redolence. It seemed that this was it: belonging. Home was this.
But the pines kept murmuring something else. You are a guest wherever you are: home is out of place.