RIGA, LATVIA  (more 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, this 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 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 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 vespers sung by god-soaked monks in

this Baltic state far so far from home’s Pacific palm-treed

 

ocean, you and I avoid each other’s eyes while time flows

fast deep and final into the Gulf of Riga for perhaps one

last embalming.

 

At this end of day in late May, mute we wait like a couple fishing--

where fresh grass caresses the vast Daugava seething—we wait

and wait for what’s unnamed unseen but breathing, for something

 

elusive and good that may persist or not, that might never be caught,

nor even understood.