for all of us
My country is cold,
with knifed mountains
that tear the old lace of saudade,
that word born
where the Mediterranean kisses
the southern coast of Europe;
as far from where I stand
as you are. These feelings
die in the northeast, cannot live
where we once burned magic
and scrubbed passion raw
with lye soap: Puritan country,
uncompromising, plain,
unvarnished, severing ties
is where I live, far from you.
You, heat-drowned, lost in patterns
of days I will never know,
and nights dreaming
no longer of me but what is possible.
Susan Daniels Poetry 