shadow & silty heat.

{me, by the river, may}

{willow blossoms, by the river, same evening}

These are old photos, from mid-May before I left for Denmark -- both of my secret stretch of riverbank on the North Saskatchewan. Here is their accompanying poem : (again, in a very early state...)

i think of you when i visit
the river, sometimes singing
when i think no one will hear.
just like the cemetery songs,
my mother spilling lemon pepper.
tearburn of khortytsya hits the earth.
another spring, & we are aging,
remembering the
old country we never knew.

by the river, the dark-eyed juncos
go fan-tailing, bursting aspen candles,
a forest of green fireworks suspended
like chandeliers; & i slip into the
giddy languor of evening, of one
who was born here & knows nowhere
else. never has to ache for home.

on the deadfall, the sound of the nuthatch
saying kék, kék.
i remember you telling me
that’s the hungarian word for blue,
sky bright as its silky underbelly.

but there were no magyar neighbours here,
you told me. no markets, no mamalyha, no
distant wreath of mountains. i remember
your eyes over the valley,
the cracked whitemud of the riverbank,
an endless sparkling, the cacophony
of wood-ducks. where is that
village violin?

you crossed the ocean too late, you said.
too old past twenty to emigrate.
after a certain time, a transplant’s
roots will never quite take. oh, they
might grow, yes, but they will
ache for some other chernozem, or
the salt of carpathian rocks.

but i am the kalyna seeds that drifted,
carried by birds, in beaks & feathers,
in your apron pockets.
my mother landed
in this ground, grew well here.
strong bones, pale branches like
you did, but a waxy sap,
a tolerance for frost.

& i think of you, passed on,
wondering if the swallows stayed
here with you, or
carried you home. followed the
flow of the sky in the flow of the light
til west became east, a slow migration
of shadow & silty heat.

i think of you when i see
the black earth of the spring fields
churned up, the luminous wind
& the scent of sweet willow honey.
it’s not yours, no, but it's a rich land
& it will nourish you:
here are my red fruits, my
petals & plumage, feeding you now
with what i am.