honey-cake recipe

[in honour of the bee that made the honey for this cake]

Medivnyk

(Ukrainian Christmas Honey-Cake)

You will need:

4 eggs, at room temperature & separated into yolks & whites

3 tbsp butter

1 cup of honey (preferably a wild or buckwheat honey, but clover is still good too)

3 cups of flour

1 cup of sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves (optional)

1/2 cup very strong black tea (steep two bags of a breakfast tea for 10 minutes in 1/2 cup water)

1/2 cup sour cream

the zest & juice of one good-sized orange

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

(You can double these ingredients, but be warned that you will need a large mixing bowl/cauldron to mix it all, so I am presented you with the halved version.)

To make:

1. First, heat the honey in a saucepan on the stove until boiling, then remove it from heat to let it cool. Also, ensure that the oven is pre-heating to 325 degrees F.

2. Beat the egg yolks & butter together until fluffy & well-blended. Set aside for a moment while you sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, & cinnamon (& cloves) together in another bowl. When this is done, add the yolk-butter & cooled honey, as well as the cup of sugar. Mix well until smooth-ish & blended.

3. Mix together the tea, sour cream, orange juice & zest, and then add to the mash of goodness forming in the bowl.

4. Take the egg whites & beat them until they form stiff peaks; add this to the batter & mix very well, along with the chopped walnuts. You may want to mash it all around with your hands to ensure that there are no lumps or islands of flour. Be sure that there is someone around to spatulize your hands after.

5. Pour into the loaf pan(s) that you have already buttered & floured. It's better to make multiple cakes & pour less into each pan, or you will have towering cakes that will be much like volcanoes, with molten uncooked magma in the centre.

6. Ensure that the oven is pre-heated (& indeed, still turned on!); put in the cakes for about 1 hour. Don't open the oven before 30 minutes to check on them, or extra goodness will escape. If you are making smaller ones, poke liberally with a toothpick at about 45 minutes. There will of course be no cake-magma in the middle when they are done, & the outside will be a pleasant golden colour.

7. Cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes, then turn them out & cool a bit more. Medivnyk -- duzhe smachnyj z maslom, i takozh z chaskoju chaju! [Medivnyk is quite tasty with butter & a cup of tea!]

This is a usual dessert after the 12 dishes of Sviat' Vechir on Ukrainian Christmas. Honey has always been cherished commodity in Ukraine; also, in folklore, bees are sacred messengers to the Divine/the sun, & honey is a bit like liquefied light.

bazhaju vam veseliu koliadu!

In honour of a belated Solstice & coming Christmas, here is a koliadka (Christmas carol) that I translated. It comes from the Halychyna region in Western Ukraine, & tells of how three doves created the world:

When in the beginning there was no world,
then there was neither heaven nor earth.
Everywhere there was a bright blue sea,
And in the midst of that sea,
A green linden-tree –

On the linden-tree three doves,
Three doves discuss,
Three doves take counsel as to how
to create the world.

“Let us plunge to the bottom of the sea,
let us gather fine sand, let us scatter fine sand,
that it may become for us black earth...

“Let us gather golden stones,
let us scatter golden stones!
Let there be for us a bright sky,
A bright sky, a shining sun!
A shining sun and a bright moon!

“Let there be a bright moon
and a morning star, a bright morning star
and little starlets...

This song is quite ancient, and ethnomusicologists believe this one may be over one thousand years old, as a version has been documented in the Chronicles of the Kyivan Rus’ state (the 10th century AD). It was originally sung on Solstice, or Koliada, a festival that ancient Slavic-language-speaking tribes celebrated in honour of their ancestors, to mark the changing light of the seasons, to sing back the sun. Even now, many koliadky have remained relatively unchanged, as Slavic Christianity is incredibly syncretic, much in the same way as in Latin America. The original symbols – the linden tree as a sacred ‘telephone line to the gods’ under which offerings and prayers were made, the doves as ancestral spirits, and the shamanic diving into the otherworld (underwater) for earth-making materials – just have another layer of meaning now. The linden is a Tree of Life, and also symbolizes divine love, and the three birds are the Holy Trinity. (The diving underwater could be re-codified to represent baptism, but I’m not completely sure.) The spinning sun on a stick that was carried in the village as the carollers went wandering became a ‘star of Bethlehem’.

Some of these same carols for Solstice are now sung at Christmas, along with songs more intentionally Christian. In some regions of Ukraine, even today, the two holidays have blurry boundaries. The word in standard Ukrainian is Rizdvo; in my grandma’s Pidhiriany-Boiko dialect Christmas is still referred to as ‘Koliada’. So she would always say to me “Khrystos rodyvsia! [Bazhaju tobi] veseliu koliadu!” (Christ is born! [I wish you] a happy Solstice!)

The motif of diving underwater for earth-creating materials -- called the Earth-Diver -- by folklorists -- is a theme that appears in creation stories from the easternmost parts of Eastern Europe all the way across Russia through Siberia and into North America.

Another story told in western Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria tells of the god of light and the god of darkness flying over the endless waters as a white swan and a black swan. The god of light, Biloboh (Kupalo) was the spirit of summer and life, and the dark god Chornoboh (Koliada) was the spirit of winter and death. They are tired from flying, and Biloboh tells his brother/shadow to go dive under the water to find some mud to make land for them to rest upon. Chornoboh is a little bit of a trickster, & greedily holds extra land in his mouth when he surfaces. However, the mud begins expanding & he has to spit it out so he doesn’t choke – this creates the Carpathian mountains. (More chaos soon ensues & goats & bees are created in the fray, but that’s a story for another time.)

Finno-Ugric & Altaic cultures in Siberia have similar stories about light & dark brothers creating the earth, often in the form of birds such as loons and ravens. Other times, first humans or sky god/desses send animals under the waves to check things out. In my readings to discover more about the toponymy of northern Alberta, I’ve read a number of stories about world-creation. I am hoping to find some local story that is linked to place, much in the way that the Blackfoot/Siksika have Napi, Old Man, melded into southern Alberta landscape. Before Napi could become the landscape, he needed to create it:

“Long ago there was a time when water covered the entire world. Napi the creator wanted to know what happened below all of this water. He sent a duck, an otter, then a badger, but all came up with nothing. Finally, a muskrat dove beneath the water and was down a very long time. He returned with a ball of mud in his paws. Napi took the lump and blew on it until it dried and was transformed into the earth. He molded the hills, valley, and mountains with his hands. He created groves in the earth for rivers and lakes. The first people were molded from this earth and Napi taught men and women how to hunt and to live. Once Napi felt his work was complete, he lay down in the mountains, and disappeared...” [from: Origins of Canadian History to Confederation]

last night i dreamt i was a mapmaker....

So, despite the fact that I live under a cozy little rock with minimal exposure to a lot of things, I have long been aware of the fact that video games are often very brutal; I know they contain much gratuitous violence, some of the fantastically-grotesque-slaughter variety, what with monsters & demons & such, & also some of the disgustingly realistic, morally bereft sort involving humans. Many are replete with misogyny & other social ills, & I could carry on about this for a long time & talk about many things (such as if they’re going make games of killing things, why don’t they blast cancer cells into oblivion??) but what I really wanted to mention was one particular game has now disgusted me in a different, new way; it’s not the usual gory, visceral shock, but rather, something more theoretical.

You see, I had the misfortune of seeing a commercial (multiple times, alas) on the television for ‘Age of Empires III: The New World’. Immediately I was rather upset by this depiction of armies fighting each other to conquer regions of the world (which are represented on ‘archaic’-looking maps, which look like something you made in junior high Social Studies, spilling tea & singeing the edges with a lighter for that ‘old’ look). You have these various countries from the ‘Age of Exploration’, ‘The Colonial Age’ and ‘The Imperial Age’ & you create a little army of battling colonizers to fight other ‘world powers’ to ‘claim your dominion’ over North and South America. So, essentially a piece of European colonial nostalgia – let’s fight other monarchies for land that isn’t even ours!

It would be one thing to relive European wars between European powers fought on that continent; it would be glorifying wars, yes, but somehow it seems less ideologically abhorrent that ‘taking over’ land in the Americas. Land that is not theirs! Land that cannot even be ‘owned’ according to the worldviews/ philosophies of people who live on it! But no, we’ve got regions like ‘Patagonia’ and ‘The Rockies’, named & packaged up especially for the French, the Portuguese, the English, the Ottomans (?!) to fight over – in a way that is not historically accurate, yet all too realistic.

I am wondering how indigenous peoples are represented in this game, if at all. They aren’t one of the eight or so ‘Powers’ with armies, of course. Are they conveniently wiped off the map by handing out smallpox blankets, hmm? How’s that for historical accuracy? Or are they ignored completely, or pushed into the background just for local flavour? Mind you, they’re all ‘close to nature’ – these savages are ‘part of the land’, remember? Thus, they can be taken over quite easily! Maybe you get extra bonus points for forcing them into situations where all they can do to survive is sign your treaty! Super!

This just truly upsets me on so many levels. I haven’t seen the game played, granted, but what I know of it does not equal good. Why are we reliving the patterns of colonial history, romanticizing it? Glorifying it? I think this is really irresponsible. What is it going to teach children who sit around fantasizing about the exploits of their fictitious-yet-all-too-realistic British armies instead of reading their new Social Studies textbook*?. I worry that people will be even less likely to learn about just how destructive & devastating colonialism has been, and how terrible the aftermath continues to be for many people. It’s ‘over’ but it has left so much impact that cannot be ignored. Many of its structures are deep-rooted & still evident in the attitudes & actions of governments & citizens. But I suppose children playing this on their plasma-screens in their suburban basements don’t know much about exploitation, racism, poverty & marginalization, & likely can’t connect it to the ripples of their ancestors’ actions... Bah. I’d rather that they blow up some zombies...

* Alberta’s new curriculum is actually supposed to have greater Aboriginal Canadian content & representation, which is promising...

* * *

I had a really good conversation* with Sharon on Thursday morning about toponymy & colonization. I learned that the village of Nestow, Alberta, comes from Cree neestao, brother-in-law, and Atim Creek (near Big Lake & my Aunt & Uncle’s house) is Dog Creek. The Sturgeon River is actually Red Willow Creek, Miko’oopow. There are so many forgotten names.

Also, while reading a book by Chase Hensel (Telling Our Selves: Ethnicity and Discourse in Southwestern Alaska) I came across a quote that quite powerfully echoes a lot of my feelings about the colonization of naming, & how the process works:

“That wilderness, “terra incognita” is unconnected land – a place that lacks “knowers”, or those whose knowledge is officially recognized. That is why Lewis & Clark could still “explore” even though they depended on native guides, and why colonial powers could “claim” land already owned [sic] and occupied... wilderness is both created and destroyed by Euro-American culture... [& it is] every bit as real & violent [as physical destruction]. Destroying the knowledge & ties that aboriginal inhabitants have with the land creates wilderness. Only then can wilderness be explored; those who know it intimately must first be removed from the scene. Generally geographic features are renamed to mark this change. For example, the mountain that Tanaina Athapaskans called [sic] Denaali was (re)named McKinley.” (p. 50-51)

This has really made me think about the way I conceptualize the land. There is no place on Earth where we can really say we are in the ‘middle of nowhere’; almost every place (save Antarctica & maybe a few islands, some ice floes in the North) has been inhabited by humans for thousands & thousands of years. Sometimes when I’m wandering around in the bush with my dad, I think of the forest as a place no one has ever been, I sometimes thoughtlessly speak of being in the ‘middle of nowhere’. But even in the stretches of boreal forest where we fish, off the roads past forgotten oil wells, we are somewhere. It has once been someone’s somewhere. Other fishing grounds, trap-lines, camp-sites – it’s silly of me to be even so subconsciously so self-centered, to think I have discovered anything, that this could be ‘nowhere’. There are probably indigenous stories linking creeks & trails, stories I don’t know. There is no untouched wilderness, everywhere is, or has been, somewhere to someone. & we should be careful not to strip the land, its geography, of its stories & knowledge. To do so is a remnant of the colonial mindset.

* I had forgotten that I really like Labrador tea (ledum groenlandicum). It made me feel all heavy & calm. I’m told that it’s good for twitchy people.

***

And, lastly:

http://earth.google.com/

Google Earth, how I love thee!

This can engage me for hours. Really. I discovered it at work, but I have it on my computer now, & am in the process of a little project; I am reuniting Alberta places with their original names... It is quite satisfying.

I think I was a cartographer in a past life (a life where I could draw better & was good at math). Also, I love tilting the perspective & zooming in as I approach mountains, like a bird. I get such thrills from turning the map, looking down over the braided Lymnytsia River to Nebyliw, or retracing my hikes over South Kananaskis Pass. Then I shut my eyes later & feel like I’m still moving. "Maps, they are like the drugs to me!"

photobooths.

Here I present to you an exhibit on the evolution of the photobooth... The top picture is my baba (R) with a friend from work whose name escapes my mother. She's my age, almost 23, circa 1938... How mannered & sedate! & how spacious the background! I love her little half-smile...

Contrast this with the bottom picture, of Bryna (L) & I (R). We are crammed into the booth at the Calgary Greyhound station, pre-Folk Fest 2003. & lo, we are charming...

That is all.

psychasthenia.

[this picture was taken by bryna.]

i have been listening to some exceptionally lovely music lately. the sort of music that fools the medulla into believing it can forget about heart rate & breath rate, that tricks one into thinking that the sound alone is enough to sustain the body.

i would like jorane’s music (specifically, the live cd) to be dripped slowly into my veins like missing electrolytes. it is raw & rich enough to be sufficient nourishment, i think. these are the sounds i want to be filled with, i want to amalgamate them into my cells, be part of them.

(is it strange to be this moved by sound? to have such a visceral, physical reaction to it, to make it part of you? i have such alien desire.)

the cello is my favorite stringed instrument. the resonance and depth of sound mixing with the human voice reminds me at once of moving over a landscape, the swell of terrain, and moving within a body.

its shape is strangely human, stringy ribs over a resonating chamber, the lung, the warm raw sound of some illuminated pink tent, blood pulsing hard up against the arterial bowing. yet the sound is so wide open, so voluminous that i think of land, a valley of vastness between ridges. grasping fistfuls of dry windy wheatgrass, digging into the roughness of lichen, air passing over the surface of rock, cloud and sun over mountain, touching everything with plucked fingers between earth & sky.

there is a term – psychasthenia – which denotes something like a ‘disturbance in the relation between self and territory’. i suppose this could be the mind-state of feeling like the boundaries dissolve between you & everything around you, so you feel undifferentiated from your environment. kim sawchuk calls it ‘[an] embrace of the space beyond’. & while this could certainly be frightening -- to be so de-personalized in the wrong setting could destroy you -- it seems like an apt term to describe that sort of yearning, musically-induced condition of wishing to turn brainwave to soundwave, to be released from what the skin delineates, to melt sound into you, to melt into sound.

political angst.

[disclaimer: this entry is evidence that sadness amplifies my distaste & frustration quite substantially... it is an accumulation of notes i've written during periods of un-sleep, dealing with last December's Orange Revolution in Ukraine & the fact that I've heard we're voting again in January. yes, it's a little angsty. ]

About a year ago, I was so inspired by Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. I would see the pictures of bright flags waving in Maidan Neznalezhnosti, & I wanted to be there so badly. I thought of my grandparents’ families in Nebyliv, all probably taking the train to L’viv just to be there, & I thought, they’re having a revolution & I’m writing theoretical papers. It was stirring. I would get little tears in my eyes every time I heard Shche ne vmerla... It was all my idealistic & naïve little heart could have wished for – a revolution in my foremothers’ country! Here I was seeing them live out the pattern they’ve always repeated throughout their history as a nation: the fight to end corruption & become independent.

It was a peaceful protest, & everyone mobilized. There was so much hopefulness, determination, that beautiful liberated attitude of to-hell-with-it-all-we-have-nothing-to-lose-&-so much-is-possible... I loved hearing the stories of babas making tea with jam to serve to the freezing protesters, & loved reading the Ukrayinska Pravda & Pora blogs written by students who updated many times a day with such immediate & glowing words. I loved knowing that there were people huddled by fires singing folksongs, & that musicians were inspired to create new things to sing; dissent was weapon-free & stronger for it; so firm, so decisive, so communal & so charismatic. & when another election was held, & Yushchenko’s ‘pro-democracy’ alliance came through, it seemed it had been effective.

It was effective in the sense that Yushchenko was fairly elected. People protested, their government, & so much of the rest of the world listened. But then things started to fall apart. Yushchenko got a little too pro-American-capitalism for many people’s liking, & the Ukrainian economy also suffered. He insulted the groups like Pravda & Pora (who were quite instrumental in organizing the whole revolution thing) for daring to criticize him. He sacked most of his cabinet in September, including a former ally, Yulia Tymoshenko (his main supporter in the elections & also very instrumental in the revolution). He seems to be getting sketchier & sketchier. I mean, he never seemed completely sound, but compared to Yanukhovych, he was benign. However, it’s clear that he’s seemingly just another politician, corrupt in his own little way.

I can’t imagine how this must feel to the people who organized the revolution, to see everything fading & dimming & crumbling so quickly. I try to be positive, when I look at the fact that the Revolution’s activities inspired the development of new political parties, diversifying the options for many people. Civic activism is still strong, with many campaigns and actions to force the shaky government into taking responsibility for economic policy and improving environmental protection and challenging urban development. The free press – papers like Olena Prytula’s Pravda – seems to be flourishing. Compared to Soviet times, this is very, very hopeful.

However, I cannot ignore the glaring fact of how this situation is yet another flashing reminder of how all government, is deeply flawed & even in a ‘democracy’ we are ultimately at the mercy of the wease-ish personalities in power, regardless of who they are, & whether we elected them or not. & so I am caught between frustration with administration & the admission that the Revolution did give me some hope for grassroots movements.

Maybe it still gives me hope because it’s a striking contrast to here; in Canada the majority of the population seems mostly disinterested in politics. I am not saying that there aren’t any very dedicated civic action groups, because there definitely are. I am just saying that whereas the overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s 50-some million people were involved in the Orange Revolution, whereas here, the priorities of the average person (especially in St. Albert) sound much like this:

“I’m not going to vote in the January election. Are you crazy? It’s too cold to go outside! But I will go out when it’s -40 to put gas in my S.U.V. & then I’ll go to the mall & spend lots of money on a plasmatic television and watch reality tv & lots of sensationalist American news produced by mass corporations!”

(So I guess winter camping in a downtown square with little shelter is out of the question...)

The apathy of the general public is surpassed only by that of the visionless & self-absorbed politicians themselves. Maybe they aren’t doing anything actively malignant & war-like to the rest of the world, but what are they really doing that’s productive? Ignorant little oil-vampires in this province, we’ll never get enough left-wing power in the government to ever really get any change, it seems. I could scream. & look at the messes even within Canada, the disparities & unwillingness to profoundly deal with certain issues (especially Indigenous rights) -- certainly, they toss a little money around every once in awhile, but they aren't active enough.

I used to feel that it was important to protest regardless of anything, as an exercise of one’s democratic rights. But in a democracy a government is supposed to be accountable to the people, there is some sort of contract there. But they haven’t been listening in the past. Look at the war, this war that’s gone on despite outcry from everywhere. If there were to be another protest tomorrow, I’d hesitate to go. On one hand, I want to show support for what I personally believe in; because I do not want to be mistaken for supporting something through complacence or inaction. (Thus, I’ll vote in January, because I still have a kernel of futile hopefulness...) However, it is sort of a dilemma, because I also feel that protest signifies you actually trust your government, your elected representative, to actually DO something about your concerns. & that seems pretty futile around here. A politician? Listening to someone? Well, maybe after they finish 'forgetting' where they put their money, stop ignoring poverty & unclean drinking water (in a country the U.N. likes to vote one of the best places in the world to live!), and wrap up a few rounds of golf....

It basically seems that they’ve decided that having another election would be fun, they’d get to do even less real work & even more travel paid for by taxpayers! Super! Who can come up with the emptiest platform this year? Or pay their friends to do it? Who can think of more bills that have already been passed, that we can waste time & money voting on again?

According to my historical sources (ie: my parents), I get two different readings of Canada’s past government action. My dad believes that we’ve lived in a state of perpetual weasel-dom since as long as he can remember, and for pretty much all of the history he’s ever read; my mom says that politicians used to actually get things done & people cared about politics once upon a time, like when Diefenbaker & Trudeau were around. I don’t know what to think, really – I’ve read the history, of course, but I fear my second-hand views have already been skewed by my parents & Trudeau-loving high school social teachers’ recollections of such things.

I don’t know what the answer is. I’ll vote. I’ll keep on writing letters to political representatives when I’m annoyed with them, & I’ll keep recycling the stupid patronizing form letters & propaganda that their representatives occasionally send back. Maybe I will be able to just accept the fact that politics are silly, but thinking politically on an individual basis is not. & then maybe I will slowly become less frustrated, and more serene, about the things I cannot change. & I will keep doing all the things I do that I believe are important to living in a sustainable, aware way, & make little changes when I can. I have a very dear friend who manages to live this way, and it is quite inspiring to me. I wish I could be more like him. I see it as a form of benevolent anarchy, as a symbolic kick in the shins to weasels everywhere. So I will try to stop over-thinking this & indulging in this angst, & try to do my very small little things.

But, to conclude my angst, I shall just say that I will feel very cranky & very cynical while voting in January. & weirdly nostalgic at Christmastime, thinking about the Ukrainian vote. How it could've signified the start something even better... but became a one-step-forward-at-least-half-a-step-back sort of thing. Which I suppose isn't bad to start with... (& thus, my idealism isn't dead yet! in fact, it thinks it will get up & go for a walk!)


*ps: that statue in the photo is the one by city hall, made to honour ukrainian pioneer women., called 'the madonna of wheat'... with that sheaf of wheat & heavenward gaze, it is quite kitschy & makes me think of a combination russian 'motherland' propaganda, & i don't know quite to make of it. i admit i find it a tiny bit endearing. maybe i feel sorry for because when i took the photo, there was birdshit on her head...

I have been sitting here attempting to write, but the music in my ears is too lovely, too hypnotic – paralytically so. It is a CD called ‘Fly, Fly my Sadness’ which is a collaboration between the Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur-Tu & the Bulgarian choir Angelite. Throat-singing combined with minor-key polyphonic harmonies! I literally don’t know what to do with myself. I am going to marry this.

I can’t really describe it any better than that it just makes me want to crumple into a ball on the floor, fold into myself & let it flow into my ears. This is the sort of music that makes you feel like you are just one large resonant surface, a sort of full-body cochlea or tympanum, it is so thoroughly nourishing. Certain notes hit me & I stop breathing for a moment. I wish I could make sounds like this.

& I suppose, thinking about it, the certain pauses & waves & spaces & reverberations are a little reflection of my thoughts, all the things my body can’t quite voice; this emptiness and fullness that I am feeling simultaneously. Her death has dug a hole in me, the edges raw with frost -- & then filled this hole to overflowing with little red berries, babyzna, the (spiritual) inheritance from a grandmother. & I am overwhelmed. I am so grateful for all she has given me, to carry with me – but I am also terrified I will never live up to her. There’s a desolation like a spruce tree with the top branches lopped off, the weight of snow now settling heavy on the low boughs. ‘My family tree is losing all its leaves.’ I want so much to make her proud, I don’t want to forget – there is just so much, so much I don’t know what to do with myself.

It’s just been harder since the funeral, I thought it would get easier, I thought it would be more of a release, a relief. But now her presence feels so faraway & dispersed, little atoms scattered, light on water freezing up, dissolving, sucked back into the sky.

I was shoveling snow on the driveway the other night, & stopped under the ash-tree. The first stars I saw when I looked up were the Pleiades, faint like smoke swirling above the house, a cluster of cold breath in front of my face – a small sign.

& I thought that perhaps I am being impatient, maybe I should let her rest, maybe I just need to calm down & then I might feel her closer to me, then I might feel her presence more strongly within me. But this all just makes me feel so young, so tired, so sad. I am sad, selfish, & three years old & I want her back now. Бабусенько, де ти? Приходь до мене, веселости немає без тобою ...

fly, little swallow

seeing her: a stillness
lay across me supine
as the shadow of a tree, one breath

said the earthbound nurse, & she lay there,
still singing –

her mouth open, peaceful
holding an endless note:

shhhhh
a little swallow is leaving,
leaving her body empty,
escaping from a mouth

chapped like a knothole
in crumbling birchbark,
emerging

through the clouds flowing
like wax through the hole blown
in a pysanka, decreating

snowy light into a sky blue
as her closed eyes, behind her lids filled
with the smoky nebulae of night –

vidlitai, lastivochko!*
meteor streaking
into the folding arms of the pleiades,

leaving a tree to burn
joyfully, turning me into ashes,
the earth –

[november 27th, 2005]

*=fly, little swallow

***

"Anna's ghost all around / Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me /Soft and sweet / How the notes all bend and reach above the trees..." -- In an Aeroplane Over the Sea, by Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel)