Baltic

Night deep black outside,

Stars blinding in the dome of heaven,

South of Lake Ontario, and Canada, beyond.

Wind moans around old cornices

Comes blowing from the northeast,

Brings a vision so mysterious, time and place a blur,

Wind susurrating sibilance into feeling, then to words.

From across the fearful maritime,

Across the North Atlantic,

Where steppes roll deep and frigid

Into vast and nothingness

The gypsy wraps her fringed shawl tight,

Clasps a volume of her verses,

Words on desiccating pages,

She’s been writing all the evening

In the small hut’s candlelight.

She hurries toward the fireplace glow

That flickers through the window

From a cottage on the shore;

Lonely on the "zinc-gray" Baltic

Brodsky pours some vodka there,

And there they read together,

The frozen world forgotten,

In their rich and blending tones

Reading verses in a language

I do not know but understand.

I’m organic in this fabric I created out of nowhere,

Their stanzas transcending my prosaic here and now,

And as quickly as it came to me,

That slice of life from somewhere

Long ago and just imagined

Dissolves into the curling wind,

Fringed shawl no longer tangible,

Dark eyes shuttered, voices quiet, and

The battered covers closed.

The firelight fades, the hearth grows cold,

And real although it was for some long and

Vibrant moments, Brodsky’s dead, his gypsy vanished,

With nothing left but timelessness,

Visitation inexplicable and fading.

Outside now the wind picks up,

I strain to hear faint tolling bells

From an old church on some far and blown cold shore,

And coming from the Maritimes,

I pause and sniff the air

The memory smells of salt.