Odessa Lost

 
Where are you my
wounded urchin?
The winter's frostbite
has dulled my fingertips
and I find no solace

in my tea.

I look but you are
nowhere;
still the sting of your echo is
everywhere.

The gold of the wheat fields,
tamed by the memory of
your hair, has lost its luster.

The rhythm of the tram
lulls me to times
where the sound
of bells was sweet and
our laughter was deep.

Oh how I long to distill
that essence in a jar
so that I might
open it at midnight,
and breathe in the elixir
of such errant delight.

Each night I search for
you kisa, in the
pages of Vechernyaya Odessa,
hunting for you between the lines.

I weep in earnest for your return.
 


Burnt Cinderella


I reluctantly walk your ring of fire,
heart singed mind burned and scarred.
Across the coals I walk alone.

A furnace blast of reality
bakes me alive again and again
as my resolve melts against the assault.

Fire purifies the dead but
it destroys the living.
I'm the burnt Cinderella

standing in a world of ash
filled with spirits and bodies,
their essence trapped in my soul.

The weight of them keeps me here 
until the wind reclaims them and
when I feel a lightness of being I run.

I stumble into a forest filled with new growth,
cleansed too by fire of its undergrowth,
we sit and wait together for the first sanctifying rain.

Then the first drop arrives, the ring of fire sizzles and spits,
and just before it dies its embers glow preternaturally 
and in that moment nothing ever looked so beautiful.



The Mismatched Beauty of Synchronicity

 
He was an ordinary man
dressed in an unremarkable suit,
she was an extraordinary woman
dressed in shiny silk that hugged
each dangerous curve 
in a waterfall of quicksilver.

A disparate pairing to the uninitiated
until the music began and they swayed
in a rhythm so personal it rewrote
each note into the smoothest of symphonies
surrounding them in a spellbinding aura.

Unmatched bookends in a world
of symmetrical pairings, so deceiving, so intriguing. 
And in their private moments their synchronicity
retired to crisp sheets and gossamer musings
of romantic artistry that sang to the power of one.



The Ribbon I Wear  In My Hair

 
The world has swallowed me whole
and I cannot find a torch nor
feel the light that once saturated
my childhood.

What is courage when there is
nothing to lose? This journey
through the badlands has rubbed
the downy softness from hope's
feather while the nub of it rests
between my ribs.

I am riddled with life,
a burdensome load that shifts
precipitously.

I must adjust my footing with care.

Decisions, 
like minefields, can have 
cataclysmic consequences.

Yet, during moments
of crisp air and laughter
luminosity appears behind
the darkness.  This halo
beckons and reminds me
that the real gift
is the ribbon wound around it all
that I choose to wear in my hair.
 



Arkhangelsk -- Архангельск


On September 4, 1918, United States troops landed at Archangel, in northern Russia. The landing was part of an Allied intervention in the civil war raging in that country after revolution in 1917. 

Can you still hear the footsteps 
drowning out the shouts of the fallen? 
Stay close milaya moya,
we are expected at home.

Vanya, I have lost sight of 
the colorful scarf flagged
around the threadbare grey
of your coat.

Calling your name,
no one acknowledges 
the plaintive stretch 
of each letter. I am a 
screeching ghost in the 
wind. 

Finally in an alley finding 
you still on cobblestones 
with your scarf covering your 
beautiful face. 

Kneeling beside you watching 
your life run in rivulets back
into an ungrateful motherland

I know --

Our archangel has forsaken us. 
Torn between grief and anger 
I cannot bear to look at you. 

You promised me, you promised 
mama, you would always stay 
here, in hell, with me. 



©2014 Anne Ross