Poland in my Dreams

She came into my night world:
Pillowed in sunlit down,
So blonde
Only her eyes,
Inked into her face,
Spoke of the dark.
Taking my freckled hand
In her white one,
As cool as a comforter
On a winter’s eve,
Before body heat has made
It a second skin.
She led me to a polished
Nut-brown boothed pub
Where she ordered for us
In a language buzzing with z’s and v’s/
The embroidery of her blouse
Told an older country’s myths.

Her smile was all for me.
Every word I understood was another photo
From my mother’s mother’s album”
Warsaw clouds carrying Siberian snow
And heartraking stories of a Krakow spring.
They were danced into my bones at family weddings:
Peeled from my sin at wakes.

I’d preferred my father’s side of the family
--meeting them only in my mind
or in movies of a land, rainy and green.
In the “Quiet Man,” I met aunts and uncles
Knew the red of their hair
and wool of their shawls and caps.
In “Tunes of Glory,” I sang their songs,
Wore their plaids and crests.

But this dreamvisiting Winter-woman
Was whitely waiting with me,
While the drinks were served in clear glasses.
“Ococim,” she said
a name, a toast, or a sneeze.
I held my glass,
Pretasting my throat aching no.
There wasn’t life enough
to explore one side of me:
the summerland,
let alone this other colder clime.

And I awoke, uncovered,
In the white dawn,
Snow falling.