Restoration

One daughter is a dark table half-hidden in trees,

heft of her grain sheens moist with dew;

the other a bird, lover of sky and horizons,

her song of sweet freedom not heard for years;

the son a rainbow under snow covered cliffs

where young women and men jump to fly,

burst forth with glee to fulfill wild dreams.

Here on the edge of a field snowflakes drift

and plop softly like unwritten poems

from the blue dome overhead and cover our table,

holding a bird feeder, binoculars and detailed map

to a high mountain pass where children play

music with feeling, eat sandwiches cut neatly in half,

after lunch, chase each other shrieking.

Later they lay on silken mats,

wear raincoats from Stockholm, eat stuffed cabbage

from Zagreb, learn to love each other’s quirks

while waiting for jolly pranksters to tell stories

of home for nickels or decanters of blood-red wine.

The painter mourns his lost children traded

for adventure after death of a dog, a grandmother,

a family, a job, a home, stormy times

raining warfare and fear.

He makes art from blacks and reds cracking a canvas

of circular thought, a topography laden with strokes

of thick sad colors, heavy, stiff yet resilient and sharp as knives,

like the steely will that repopulated families of Croatian villages

flattened in Winter, wracked by flaming siege

and these daily departures of children and women

across unknown frontiers.

But where are their men when desperately needed?

Three children stand together in an empty pool

in this new country that has found them.

It’s noon. They rest quietly in sunlight,

their serenity, unsaid and subtle. They feel soothed.

Each is a flower, a rose, an iris, a gladiola,

forces newly risen, a poem and a painting

come full circle, birthing their own sounds

of truth and delight composed for a father returning

from years of foreign battles, adorned in rags

and many memories of his errant wandering,

now finally smiling around the same table, 
all together they sing of family restored.