RIGA, LATVIA  ( early revision)

 

I walk a narrow ledge far above the ancient city’s

teeming, it’s endless swerving cobblestones, it’s

Pushkin statue shining regal in the ribboned park.

 

(Poets loved and honored here).  A canal below

gleams blue near paths that curve through tall birch

trees where couples stroll among gifts of tiny fragrant

flowers, meandering lovers teased by Springtime’s

burst, it’s bloodless birth of beauty.

 

I a solo vagrant wander along the wild Daugava’s edge

in Riga’s chilly air. A stolid woman and her white-haired

man sit still so quiet on morning’s dewy grassy banks,

 

two fishing poles in thickened ruddy hands, long lines

thrust far out into the broad and rolling river.  They wish

to land three or four glistening fish to later eat at dusk

 

with potatoes and beetroot boiled, washed down with

shots of vodka fire, then with bellies fat with gladness,

he’ll whisper a lusty thanks to her, and mean it, for their

pleasing supper.

 

But now as evening’s northern light slants gold as melted

butter, as lush as monastery vespers in this Baltic state far

so far from home’s palm-treed ocean, you and I avoid

 

each other’s eyes while time flows fast and deep and

final out into the Gulf of Riga for perhaps one last

embalming.

 

On this day in late May, mute we wait like the couple fishing--

where grasses caress the vast Daugava-- for what’s unseen

unnamed but breathing, for something elusive that may persist

or not, yet might never be caught, nor even understood.