ORCHID
What have you become, my orchid of a homeland,
besides the stray hairs of my dreams.
I am missing three fingers for this journey
of exiled peonies and bees.
I wish I could once again see
your benches where the weary come to sit
and watch their burdens bloom into butterflies.
I miss the parks under your bridges, the brides walking down
the aisle under canopies of palm trees.
O water of infinite blue
splashing on the shoulders of your cities.
I want to see the cathedral in the plaza
where men go to wash their feet
and women baptize their hopes. If only I could
find my old house in the streets of your capital
to feel sparrows in the eaves of my heart.
Exiles cry, sweet land, for the white rapture of doves
within your gardens. Even those who are tired are happy
along orchid-filled streets, and pigeons take turns kissing
the stones of your old roads.
What boats lead back to the fruits of your hands—O dear country,
on what knees did you bid us farewell?
THE PEONIES
When I was a child, butterflies landed
on my shoulders and fingers.
There were hens and roosters
to watch in my neighbor’s yard
and lightning bugs, like low stars
pulled out by a magician
from the black hat of night.
I walked with a limp
to mimic my grandmother.
I had no idea the large, open mouth of exile
would swallow me whole
or that refugees hid wedding rings
in the heels of their shoes.
I didn’t know the sadness
of leaving her country, the kind that weighs on you like an earth,
would break
my mother. I worried
a new language would fail my tongue.
I spent long hours on the swings of exile
unaware that the country
of my body was filled with silent violins.
I was scared
of dark petals falling off flowers, snakes,
and deep oceans of hurt. When my grandmother died,
I learned to fear death.
Now, on the porch of old age,
I watch the fully open peonies in the garden
and wonder how long they will last
in the orchestra of life.
O sweet chants of cellos
in the distance, let it be a long time
before they are exiled
from the pink orb of their bodies.
NOTE
Am I being honest
when I tell you
my bones are blue:
this is why I float in water
and my arms are always asking questions of the fish.
It is important
to count the heart’s fish early, not just when the first star is heard in the night
or when the first candle is lit among the teeth of refugees.
Candles argue that every dance
in the throats of birds is a lie. It’s possible
for all three of our hands to be angry
to whisper like waves abandoned on the shore overnight.
I would
say
the mouth is a birdhouse for the architecture of lost wolves,
for seabirds gone wing.
✶✶✶✶
Eva Skrande is the author of the poetry collections The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World, My Mother’s Cuba, Bone Argot, and The Gates of the Somnambulist. Her poems appear in Agni, The Iowa Review, Smartish Pace, the American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She received fellowships from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, the Inprint Foundation, and the Houston Arts Council. She teaches for Writers in the Schools in Houston. She is a faculty tutor at Houston Community College and a founder of Write for Success Tutoring.
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