print previewback TALVIKKI ANSEL
Somewhere in Space
[In a week . . . ]
In a week they are gone, did the mother
give a special call to signal we are moving
follow me, did the black snake come,
scream of the fisher, its minky body,
was it dusk, at dark. Stillness enfolds the yard
and garden, land the child knows
where raspberries grow in the garden,
wild blackberries, where the fox grapes
dropped to the pine needles.
If you ask (dim adult): How did you remember? . . .
silence, the cats’ dark tunnel under the shed
empty now. Even the grandmother’s song
of the cat coming back won’t
return them now, further afield: path
by the river, old quarry where laurels
bloom, right angle turn along the fence.