Finnish rural life, ca. 1910
Fires, always fires after midnight,
the sun depending in the purple birches
and gleaming like a copper kettle.
By the solstice they’d burned everything,
By the solstice they’d burned everything,
the bad-luck sleigh, a twisted rocker,
things “possessed” and not-quite-right.
things “possessed” and not-quite-right.
The bonfire coils and lurches,
big as a house, and then it settles.
big as a house, and then it settles.
The dancers come, dressed like rainbows
(if rainbows could be spun),
(if rainbows could be spun),
and linking hands they turn
to the melancholy fiddles.
to the melancholy fiddles.
A red bird spreads its wings now
and in the darker days to come.
and in the darker days to come.
From Only Bread Only Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2000).
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