The Saint
The vines and fields come close about the town that for so long has counted its years by vintages; the good year of the purple grapes, the poor year of the white grapes.
The town has had its part in many wars, but that was long ago.
It has a patron saint, a shepherd boy, who saved it in three wars, miraculously. But it does not ask him for help in this war. He is too intimate and near. The town is too used to asking him that the spring rains may not wash the vines, that a frost may not come to hurt them, that a malady may not take the grapes.
The mountains shadow the town, with shadows less blue than they themselves are, and scarcely more intangible than they are, as one looks up to them.
The river passes quietly below the town, slowly along the wide, still valley.