About CC

Valentina Meloni, born in Rome in 1976, has been writing poetry and tales for several years. She lives in Valdichiana and leads a rather retracted life in contact with woods and all the natural beauties that surround and inspire her. She is currently writing fairy tales and stories for children, she is dedicated to poetry and writes reviews for specialized magazines. She has published for poetry: Nei Giardini di Suzhou (In the Gardens of Suzhou, FusibiliaLibri, 2015), Le regole del controdolore (The Rules against Pain, Temperino Rosso, 2016), Alambic (Progetto Cultura, 2017). And Storia di Goccia (Drop History, Librido, 2017), illustrated fairy tale. She is editor, for the interviews colums, in the Euterpe Literature Magazine, for the essays and reviews columns, (InSistences and InDications) in Diwali-magazine contaminated. She writes on other literary and cultural magazines such as: L’area di Broca, LaRecherche and her eco-poetry and deep ecology blogs. Moreover, in 2007, she founded the group “Those Who Talk to the Trees” and the “Poems on the Tree” blog, where she draws public attention to themes of deep ecology and respect for nature through the publication of eco-poems. She can be contacted at va.lentina76@live.it. Web: www.valentinameloni.com.

1. The Angel and the Cosmos

He and the cosmos were there

to touch the bottom of the silence.

A tree is the world

which nourishes roots in the child.

The child is the tree

throwing new gems

and tending branches to heaven.

The tree and the child

were there to touch

the bottom of the silence.

No one knew what they said.

The secrets lie hidden in the thick of the woods.

The child who was speaking to trees became man.

The tree has hidden the child in its bark.

Slowly it aged.

No one will ever know what it was listening to.

The tree and man are still here

to touch the bottom of the silence.

What they say no one knows.

Maybe that's all their secret:

listen, lose the leaves, the years

feel to live, tell what it is

what it was, what it will be.

A tree is the world

that sprouts into the heart of man.

Man is the tree

which leaves the leaves

and let them go to the wind.

The angel and the cosmos are always here

to touch the bottom of the silence.

2. The Little Girl talking to the Trees

Someone wonders if ever exists

the little girl talking to the trees.

She has hidden a dream in the tin box

The letter has remained untouched, and the dream,

who knows it? Someone wonders

what the little girl talking to the trees said.

A dream made of tin and wind roots

Here! She peeps out behind the trunk.

Someone wonders if the little girl

talking to the trees ever existed.

I found her tin box

intact buried under the tree in the garden

When I opened it – trembling hands –

all the words have flown out

A fall of autumn like the leaves

of the hippocastan, even they have gone far

They are withered in the dream

There is no one to listen anymore

Only the tree stand there waiting for

the leaves going to born, for the coming – sooner or later –

Of the tin box girl, because she can not be her,

the one who holds it in hands

If she no longer knows how to play ...

If she can not listen, she can not be

the little girl talking to the trees ...

if she is no longer be able to doing it ... or yes?

3. A Flower is Never the Same

The days pass as the clouds pass

on my head. And the years dissolve

in the music of time. Do not look for me.

A flower is never the same.

Every day is different. You will tire.

So is also my life. I will not return to blossom.

There will be no bees gathering nectar

among my petals. No hand will catch me,unexpected.

I will wither. And you will not recognize me.You will

always look for the dark flower of nostalgia in me.

There will be an uncertain scent of that flower.

A memory that could hardly showe the vision.

Do not look for me. I come from the tree

which is unknown to you.I'm not a part.

I am the whole. And you can not really see me.

But… The wind will carry away these leaves,

it will lead them right near to you.

When you’ll take them into your hands

remember to read the little poems

written between ribs. There I am.

4. I hugged a Ginkgo Biloba

Today I hugged a Ginkgo biloba

Putting the palms on the bark from the thousand streets

I understood its heart as a prehistoric creature

beating slowly ... don don don

It was wishpering distant tolls

of an old bell out of time.

I strained my ears to listen to its being

all my body intented to become an antenna

receptive, I sank my toes

among the millennial roots and I found

that they were feet of giants, intact,

with inside every step of the story,

kept in keeping with the spirit of the tree

to remind us where we started off.

Hanged on the nearest branch

delicate maidenhair’s butterflies

– the bilobate leaves – talked to me, again,

and it was a language of rustling-fan

that I have not been able to capture ...

Yet, I realized, listening,

all the mystery of life,

Of another daughter world and for it generated,

I, alive and kicking, surrounded by vegetable matter

every heartbit and breath of mine, I warned

the solidity of the seed and its might.

Today I hugged a Ginkgo

and all my thoughts have become a leaf

and every leaf, soul of the world.

5. Letter from a Syrian Child to his Mother

Mom, you never told me

that you can die even breathing

I believed that to die

it would take a wound,

a crack from which life

could come out along with the blood …

Mom, you never told me

that you can die playing

among the stones and the dust

of the road who saw me run.

You never told me

you’d greeted me from so far away

and that, crying, your soul

would come to claim me.

Mom, you never told me

that you can die breathing in a dream,

that the air can also be a poison.

You told me not

I’d be an angel of glass,

asleep, in a white shroud.

Mom you never told me

the death would make me bright and beautiful

sweeping away the fear of bombs.