FIRST GENERATION

 

Our grandparents sent long, descriptive letters from across the ocean, while we recited the pledge of allegiance to a flag of forty-eight stars in a one-room schoolhouse, the familiar language of home left at the door, along with the breath-damp wool of scarves and mittens in winter. I am an American now, we were made to recite again and again, and to write it in our notebooks until it became as familiar as our own names, the names which others could not or would not pronounce correctly, and could alter with the stroke of a pen. Our prayers, too, were in English, but only when spoken out loud. Our parents, aunts, and uncles braided the old language with the new, sometimes losing track, beginning again, sometimes inventing a new word where no other could be found. But our silence, in endless variations, was easily understood, neither awkward nor American. It sat as easily as a hammock stretched between two pines, swaying gently from east to west, responsive to the slightest breeze.

MY GRANDFATHER'S DAY BOOK

 

Worn and dappled with age, it creaks slightly upon opening, must in its creases, a small narrow door leading immediately into the past. The winding blue script within -- all of it in Finnish -- I can only translate in part, a reminder that language, like memory, can only take us so far. What is left out of this ledger -- this list of dates, facts, and figures -- must write its own story elsewhere. There is no listing for the cost of whiskey and cigarettes, no mention of the son drowned on the other side of the world, nor the wife who followed soon after, no price mentioned for the arsenic that took her. The margins are narrow. There is room only for what he is willing to record, that which makes sense and can be easily measured. I don't know where my own days stand, so many squandered with laziness, the stubborn refusal of youth, so many unaccounted for. I know only that their shadow grows long, no matter which direction I stand. If I am found lacking, grandfather, let these words be a start, let my debt be paid in the telling.

MAN AND CROW

 

No one remembers now how or when, but the crow took to Grandpa Nels, and he took to the crow, until it began to follow him far into the field, the two of them talking about whatever it is that a man and a crow discuss -- the likelihood of rain, the ordinary things that matter most, or what it means to be alone on this earth. When he carried water from the well to the barn, again and again, the crow tagged along. When he fed the fox that slept in the shed, never bothering the turkeys in their pens, the crow kept watch. Grandma said the bird was so smart it could count and answer your questions, and always knew when you were talking about it. They took to speaking Finnish, the way they did to keep the kids from listening when they argued. They forgave it for stealing coins and buttons, a thimble, and even Grandpa's teeth, which were eventually returned. When it vanished, no one knew just why. It simply had crow work to do, perhaps a family of its own to watch over. But it left its absence in all the places it had been. Grandpa's shadow grew thin, his body frail, and whatever had been spoken between them remained so, white clouds sweeping clear the summer blue sky.

TOBACCO

 

I never took up the family habit of smoking,

as my grandfathers did, both of them eaten away

by cancer -- or my grandmother Artie,

who spit that bug-colored juice into a milk jug

just off to the side of the open porch,

as discretely as one could manage, not wanting

the world to know that she chewed the stuff.

But when my mother was a girl of five

or six, she reminds me, she was startled and stung

by a wasp, and her blonde, skinny arm began

to balloon, her breathing soon reduced

to a labored wheeze, the blue sky wheeling

and the dark earth pulling its door

open beneath her, she remembers her uncles

running gangly-limbed out to the field

to snatch a few green and fragrant leaves,

dowsing them with well water and wrapping them,

gently, around her red and swollen skin.

"It must have worked," she smiled softly, her eyes

grown distant and wistful in her remembering,

"Because here I am." Did she mean merely

that we make do with the remedy we have on hand,

or that one poison sometimes erases another?

Some lessons, perhaps, are lost on a son

born and raised in the frozen north.

But I can kiss and wrap a wound, I can run

when my daughter is on the cusp of falling, or edges

too close toward the oncoming traffic.

We are both, to our occasional and mutual

wonder, stronger and faster than we could have

imagined only moments before.

THE COUNTY LINE

 

(Tyyne Natus, 1906-1953)

Having waded through the green waves of ditch grass

and wildflowers, bramble grown nearly waist-high,

the prickly stems of young strawberries

and the private cosmology of gnats, we arrive

like casual explorers to examine the broken foundation,

hidden from view off the highway, of what once was

The County Line Bar, place where my grandparents --

only yesterday it seems -- served up drinks

to the always thirsty locals and those passing through,

and no doubt consumed as much as they sold.

Who's to say that these ruins are not sacred,

or their ghosts worthy of remembrance?

Just over there, my grandmother stood for what has

become my favorite photograph of her, framed

on either side by my grandfather and two regulars,

laughing, girlish and seemingly without care,

her small dog held close against her, one cloud of breath,

all but invisible, hovering in the crisp winter air.

This is how I want to remember her, her smile

like a sudden flash of daylight, the gold in her hair

shining, even in black-and-white -- before the loss

of a son on the other side of the world tore

something in her irreparably, before the alcohol bruised

and the weight of her days became too much.

I need to remember this moment, if only for myself,

to remember that she knew joy upon this earth,

the ease and gentleness of common things,

that she loved and was called beloved in return.

ERRAND

 

My mother had already broken the eggs,

measured out the bleached white flour, before

realizing that we were out of sugar.

Which is how I found myself -- a child of seven,

hesitant to speak or approach anyone -- standing

at the rusty screened door of my grandfather's

cabin with instructions to borrow a cup.

No one had mentioned this stranger before,

released from prison to die in his own way,

away from others, like any mortally wounded animal

will do, absence being the last and only

dignity most of us can summon.

No one had warned me of the skeletal visage

which emerged, hairless and scowling,

watery blue eyes sinking deep beneath the frames

of his black horn-rimmed glasses.

I looked down, then away. I stammered out

my small request, met merely with a cold, inscrutable

glance, bearing little or no curiosity as to my

existence, the grandson who happened to share

his date of birth, letting fall only a kind of

mumble-grunt meant to convey a simple No,

and a not-so-gentle closing of the door.

Only decades later did I understand why

my mother refused to go herself,

or that the instinctual, visceral fear which I felt

was, in fact, justified. But for now, I was

content enough simply to be walking away,

unconcerned with the minor failure of my mission,

while the old man receded into the confines

of self, offering only the slow certainty

of his departure, a bitter shadow lengthening,

imperceptible, like blood seeping out

from beneath our feet.

ALL THE LOVE WE LAY CLAIM TO

 

My great-grandfather Juho leans forward slightly

in his chair, as though about to speak

or to reach out his hand one last time

to his beloved, at rest in the casket beside him,

its doorway already covered in handfuls of flowers

and soil, heavy and damp, the solemn faces

of men in the background looking on, weary,

their funeral suits and ties virtually interchangeable.

But the mourner up front wears his work shirt

for this, the hardest labor he has endured

in a lifetime of work, his hands having carved

long into the night a seemingly endless array of roses

and filigree into the wood, as he had once carved

into the marriage bed, and the children's cribs,

hands that look suddenly exposed and empty,

lingering like uncertain birds too long into winter.

Could he have imagined this moment when he arrived

from that other world, with neither currency

nor language, to stake his claim and break this

ground open like a sacred book of secrets?

He must have known, without ever having to say,

that the earth we till must be fed in return,

and all the love we lay claim to must be met equally

with grief, solid as the ground on which we stand.

This, it seems, is the only bargain we are offered,

our baffled silence continually interpreted as assent.

AT THE NATURALIZATION CEREMONY

 

The families begin arriving early, the men in freshly

pressed suits, pocket squares, the women in bold patterned

dresses and colors that defy the gray drizzling skies,

their faces without exception beaming with light,

young children at their sides looking up,

knowing this day to be something extraordinary.

"There are people who live here who hate this country,"

the young woman from Colombia explains

to a local newscaster, shaking her head, "but to us,

this is still The Promised Land. It's everything."

I can't help but think of my own ancestors, who, too,

arrived with nothing, learned to speak this strange, unruly

language, drive cars, fight this nation's many wars.

It's hard to imagine my steely-eyed great-grandfather,

never caught smiling in a photo, wearing a face of

such unabashed joy. But what do I know of another's heart?

I know only this moment, this day, this swell of pride

as these new citizens make their way up Kellogg Boulevard,

their small flags waving in the chilly damp air.

It is as though a hundred or more makeshift boats were

setting out, each on a separate but similar course.

Even when they have all but vanished from view,

their voices can still be heard singing, laughing,

proclaiming -- so many different dialects, different

songs, so many different ways to say Home.

SNAPSHOTS OF MY GRANDPARENTS, CIRCA 1947

 

for Nels and Tyyne Natus

They lean into each other, almost imperceptibly, as two old drunks, long familiar with one another, often will, partly out of love, partly out of habit. They wear neither their Saturday clothes nor their Sunday best, he in plaid farmer's jacket and frayed cap, her hat tilted like a lazy flower to one side of her bronze-tinted hair. Their smiles look slightly weary, as if lacking the energy to rise fully above the surface. But this seems to be a moment on which they could agree -- no arguments here, no shouting in the old language or the new -- years before she chose the arsenic over the simplicity of sunlight, before the cancer carved through him a path which no living thing could ever hope to travel. In this moment, the silence is not pointed but as gentle as the smoke which surrounds them, bringing them somehow closer, their pale eyes narrowed slightly against the light.

COMPASSIONATE RELEASE

 

My grandfather came home from state prison

hardly noticed, came home simply to die

in peace, or rather, in whatever semblance of

peace a man like him could be granted --

the memory of past sins having their final say,

while cancer gnawed slowly at his bones.

Though not slowly enough and not

painfully enough, my aunt later quipped.

On that first, and last, hospital visit

he resembled most, to my young eyes,

the Egyptian mummy sleeping under glass

at the science museum -- that bleak

skeletal grimace glowing ghostly through

the centuries, one long, withered finger

pointing toward, or reaching out for,

what we could only imagine, ancient gauze

dangling like flesh in the clinical light,

the merely human drawing gasps of fear

and fascination from all of us gathered there.

I feared this husk of a man, and for him,

feared him instinctively, not quite knowing why.

My mother bent low to whisper to him

the forgiveness which her faith demanded,

as one would comfort a suffering child,

before walking us kids solemnly back

outside, the night suddenly quiet, hesitant,

the winter sky hanging flat and low

against the earth, our small breath visible,

hovering in the air between us.

THE MISSING FINGER

 

(for Nels Natus, 1896-1959)

In one version, your grandfather walks

purposely through the gently rustling field,

his steps only slightly wider than usual,

jaw clenched, mouth pulled inward,

holding in one upheld hand the finger

which the shears have suddenly removed.

In the barn, the sheep wait, perplexed,

half-kneeling, dark blood not their own

already seeping into damp wood and straw.

In another telling, he angles the gun

as though it were another limb, one eye

closed to the world of dancing summer leaves,

of soft breezes and silent water winding

back upon itself. He is an easy target

for himself, the burnt smell of flesh strangely

familiar, as the war draft notice flutters

on the kitchen linoleum, nearly rising into flight.

No one is left now to remember, or to claim

this as anything other than simple curiosity.

Yet in your mind's eye you can clearly see him,

his worn denim sleeve waving tentatively

to someone in the distance, someone whom

he cannot make out, his face nearly concealed

by a passing cloud of sepia and dust.

But you know it's him by what is missing,

the way the moonlight slashes through

unexpectedly -- once, then again.