Globe-Spinning
To make my own book about a voyage to Japan
when I was nine, I clipped color pictures
from a travel magazine, pretending
I’d set sail, arrived in Osaka
and traveled overland by train
on the JR Tokaido line
to Kyoto.
Onto the burlap cover
stiffened with shirt cardboard
from Father’s clean shirt,
I stitched an origami crane.
Will I ever visit Kyoto
and its temple Kinkaku-ji,
where a golden phoenix
prances on the roof
to the pulse of gazes?
Will I see kingfishers skim
over the temple’s reflecting pond,
beaks embroidering its silken surface?
Will I stand before the topiary ship
shaped from a centuries-old white pine,
layers of sails puffing above,
the scent of pinesap in air
throbbing like shamisen strings?
May my spirit climb
up through those branches
and high into the fascicles.
Train Hopping
I heard a fiddler play where the candied ducks hung from wrung necks
beaks glazed shut in a market in Shanghai—and I could have asked why
he fiddled there, but instead, I wondered where those ducks once floated.
I heard, one Sunday night at a fiesta in Guanajuato, church bells bawling
their sorrows, and I could have wondered why they sighed so—but
instead, I donned a tiara of plastic flowers and danced into the crowd.
I heard the March wind promising a sweetie as it blew along the tracks
and I could have asked, how can the wind make a promise? But instead,
I tried to catch it, swinging aboard a train.
I, Lora, hear the jinn, one I try to ignore whispering in my right ear: stay—
the other who hisses in my left ear: go—wrapped in promises and puffery,
the screech of wheels, evasions, what could be, what might have been.
Cerrado por vacaciones
Why insert myself into this kiln of August, when
sensible Granadinos are away, splashing in the sea?
Even the man who sells fresh chips has closed shop.
Yes, the golondrinas have flown and I am lonely,
retracing steps down to the Darro, a spirited river
without water below the Sierra Nevada without snow
and gazing up at the Alhambra one seeks in Granada
in August, ghosts inviting one to recline and sip
honeyed tea, reciting in Hebrew, Spanish, Ladino
and courtly Arabic, poems. Lend me your past, Granada—
to run through my fingers like a subha, memories
to nestle like threads dyed in marigold petals
and nettles and wound on an olivewood shuttle.
I’ve never been here before, and still I remember.
Mint Tea (Atay Bi Nana)
He pours hot tea
from a great height
so it cools as it tumbles
from swan neck
over gold rim
and into the stout glass
stuffed with mint
that glints like pine needles.
Lofty in his fez,
eyes kindling above
a pyramid mustache,
he pours as if to say
you are welcome,
or isn’t this mint luscious
or will she tip enough
to cover mama’s medicine
or that fly is back on the cup
or we are all in god’s hands
or what are the chances of
surviving the crossing by sea—
but what do I know
since his life may be excellent
and just as he wishes
as he sails to the next table,
and I nod in thanks
for this healing infusion
regretful I won’t ask
what his gestures really mean
as I am timid, a gatherer
of shreds from
what I sense or read,
and prefer to imagine,
tilting my face
into the steam.
Author of The Mermaid Wakes (Macmillan Caribbean) with Grenadian visual artist Canute Caliste, Lora Berg writes with a light touch from her home in Maryland. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Colorado Review, and other journals. She served abroad for many years at U.S. Embassies as cultural attaché. With an MFA from Johns Hopkins, she worked as poet-in-residence at Saint Albans School. Lora participated in the 2022-23 Poetry Collective at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is a proud grandma in a vibrant multicultural family.
Image: Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
