mercy, by PS Conway

Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine, by Paul Cézanne (France) 1887

​mercy
 
i lie face down in the field
because Mont Sainte-Victoire won’t come to me,
her pale shoulders shrug, 
like Atlas holding up the sky 
as if endurance were a form of tithe
they’d been rehearsing forever.
 
a hoary pine rises skyward,
weathered, feathered, above me, 
frames the mountains like proscenium,
tickling the clouds to clear the way 
for a blue that awaits,
full of sunlit promises, and the great knowledge
that god has a sense of humour, too.
 
watch, the fir needles hiss,
 
and i see the cypresses seek
to suppress the blocks and cubes of man
to overcome the ancient aqueduct
its gray arches 
carving progress into the valley,
and green is losing
to square terracotta houses
who’ve forgotten their curve.
 
it's silent where i lie. 
no voices rise from the menageries
my eye stabilizes, fixed on the mountain,
its weary shoulders
a form of mercy.

PS Conway

PS Conway is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two books, Echoes Lost in Stars (2024) and Life Sucks (2025). Over the last five years, his work has appeared in The Belfast Review, Spectral Realms, and twenty-five other journals and anthologies. He lives in Upstate New York freezing to death with his wife Susan and often identifies as a palimpsest soaked in red wine