People around the Arctic Circle talk of Seasons

by Sai Liuko

but of course Finland is like America: a mall in the middle of a field.

Oo-äM-Gee- we call it, most of our language imported

like emotions and gods.

our ancestors: nested under evergreens,

seeing shapes in the woods,                                                                                                 like i did

when i climbed the splintered fence of the daycare and ran to

the suburban sliver of woods, the crust of the snow,

crawled under the evergreen, sucked on pine needles.

dragged kicking and screaming back

to civilization, to R.E. classes and

summer camp leaflets.

the smaller spirits forever family secrets.

of course Finland is like America: yielding to whatever white men say.

my ancestors’ sons explain:

you don’t survive a forest by the

grace of god but the Gulf Stream.

this is why spring is inevitable,

but the bloodline-bones know: every winter the world has ended.

marrow-chill, hoarfrost, all-dusk,

praying for seeds to spill on a

plutonian picture of all things polar and boreal––

then: one weekend in May, fluorescent with birch leaves.

it must have made them––

it must have made me––

drop to their knees, praise––

whoever filled a black lake with warm water.

praise the diving maiden who did not give in until she found mud.

praise holding onto it and bringing it to the surface, so that lakes will hold lands

and we will have worlds.

this is all hearsay, a game of archaic telephone through neuromuscular instincts.

(but whatever I felt in the splinter of woods is not a singular experience)

in other stories, the maiden a water fowl,

the goldeneye’s cracked eggs oozy moons.

but see what becomes of a temple made of wood, if even that–

(what did you do, scorched and cracked–)

now we have churches on fields and four lanes.

and yet– our mothers swaddle us in our strollers and

we nap outside in subzero conditions.

the cold is good as the gods are good.

and when the only green is the aurorae and

my ancestors' sons say: charged particles,

i shut my mouth of

recycled

atoms.