---

In the fall, when I would walk home from school,

I used to imagine that Edgar Allen Poe

Hid, waiting for me behind the trees in the park.

I would squint my eyes together,

Looking ahead to the top of the hill before my house,

And see a dark silhouette, with a tall brimmed hat,

Leaning up against a tree.

Sometimes he would have a pipe

And I would see a trail of smoke

Which was gone by the time I passed the tree.

He would come back from the grave

Every October, but only I could see him,

I, who was fourteen.

The sidewalks and the streets whispered back

His stories to me in the rustling leaves

And I imagined I could hear his footsteps following,

Echoing my own.

I didn't mind that he was pale

And that his haunted eyes

Were rimmed with sleepless horrors

And black as a year of midnights.

They begged for peace and I thought that being young

My soul could count for something.

I imagined we could live on a lunar colony

In the future, where I would be a pioneer wife

Strong and determined

To make a nice home

In a small valley

Within a little crater

And no one would disturb us.

We’d look down at earth,

Our own green star,

And laugh together

At the dark tales they told

By light of the moon.

Hospitality--Kyiv, 1993

--

Leonid had a Beatles haircut and

Light blue water color eyes

Like misty windows,

Which looked in on our well

Lit living room.

Around forty, and never married,

Still living with his newly widowed mother,

He had a humble way of speaking

To a ten-year-old girl

Who told her secrets easily.

The night he invited my dad and I to dinner

His mother served borscht in their tiny flat

Filled with stacked newspapers

And post cards of the holy land.

Her silver hair shone almost

Brighter than the single bulb above the table,

 Skirted by a  faded red shade with a ragged fringe.

I looked out the misty windows

As the tea kettle boiled.

Before dinner we walked though Baba Yar;

That yearning pit of shadows,

Called out silently with its look of emptiness

In the early evening.

Gazing into the shallow ravine

Where sometimes heavy rains

Still make gold teeth and bullets rise

From the mud, blood soaked in 1941,

I shivered at the quietness

Hidden under the dark grass.

Leonid’s mother dreams of Jerusalem,

And tells me of her plans to immigrate

She asks me what my hobbies are.

I tell her I like to read, play the piano,

“And collect buttons” Leonid laughs.

“Buttons?” she asks.

Suddenly, she jumps from the table;

With a pair of scissors she snips

A pearly button made of shell

From her white angora sweater.

“Here,” she slides the button across the table,

Setting it beside my tea cup and saucer,

“For you, to remember me.”

-----

We crunched passed each other
On a woodland path,
Across a tattered tapestry
Of fading leaves.

   The small girl,
Brightly dressed in a red woolen coat,
Looked up at me 
With puzzled almond eyes,
Soft and warm as velvet 
And brave like a fawn 
Before knowing fear,
All curios laughter
And dancing speckles. 

   Her two small hands cupped together,
Overflowing with acorns as
She stood frozen, stranded,
Unable to gather,
Unable to let go, 
And with still so many left to harvest!

--------------

Epiphany
---
Caught in a sudden downpour,
I duck beneath a bush.
Suddenly aware, I breathe
The jasmine epiphany
Startling my senses
As small white flowers
Spread their canopy of scent
Mingling with rain.
	So I sometimes
	Steal upon small heavens.
	 
	
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