Immigrant Diaries: Melancholy Songs
Today the grey arrived at Copenhagen, like a shade snapped down over a window. It brought this prose/poem with it.
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This is a place for melancholy songs
The sea stretches
long and grey and even
the seabirds alone on their rocks,
each an island unto themselves.
I feel I am trying
to memorize the landscape,
embed it rebar-deep within the ground of my knowing
until it feels familiar, like home
or at least,
until it makes firm the quicksand of foreign soil
so my children won’t feel the shifting
so they can land firm off the horse.
At home, our wisteria is two years young.
She stretches her thin tips
to finger the bare edges of her over-long trellis.
Here, the wisteria is old
like wisdom, she climbs easily up
two, three, four stories
protecting those who dwell inside
from the wearing winds of age
and change
Only one house stands out
amongst the others,
not for its beauty but
but for its size,
its inappropriate smoothness,
the monstrous heave of its bulk.
Echoing its neighbors, yet
the unbroken stucco,
the brazen two car garage
the freestanding ball hoop lying tipped behind the automatic gate
screams of young money.
The Land Rover drives by,
far to wide for these cobbled streets,
enters the third door I had not seen
which opens by unseen hand
with a whir and a click.
This, too much of the future
on a shore inhabited for five thousand years.
7 comments
Beautiful and evocative of a particular place as well as tension between past and present, and between different cultures and values.
Thank you for this poem.
This is a good post Rachelle. The photograph and the poem capture the mood of the North Sea (which is what we call it here in England – but I don’t know the Danish name). I love the mood of transition and uncertainty you’ve expressed, combined with a discovery of ancient permanence. In a week’s time, we’re visiting Whitby on the North East coast of England, so will be facing across the sea to Denmark. My guess is that by then you will have returned to Seattle, but I will be thinking of you all when I look out over the greyness.
Beautiful. The phrase “rebar-deep” is fantastic.
beatiful, descriptive, song like. Some feelings I feel just in moving state to state. The uncertainity, the transition, the differentness.
simply beautiful.
i love the grey photo too….
the clouds always give things a mystical feel, i think.
lovely blog!
mccabe x
Thank you all for the lovely comments. I haven’t written poetry in years … and this one doesn’t work as well without all the spacing/formatting that didn’t transfer from Word to my blog..so I was feeling a little nervous posting it. I’m so relieved it’s been well recieved.
While preparing to pack up the house, I uncovered all my college poetry in a dusty box. Perhaps I’ll post a few..some to laugh lovingly at my younger self, and some because they’ve held up against the test of time. We shall see….
Yours,
Rachelle
Truly lovely piece. And an equally lovely little blog. I have been reading here for about a month now…I stumbled upon yet another blog displaying your pretty link too. *smiles* Your blog project seems to be expanding. How wonderful!
I did decide to join you. I really love this blog and would like to support it. I hope that I can send lots of traffic your way. I have three public blogs and placed a link icon on each. Blessings!
Green Rootsdown
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