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Finnish Landscapes
Stands of birch slide by the train, in an August light
holding ghost promises of snow reflections
dead twigs crooked, fingers in an old story.
A great white wooden house, the family foregathered
generations deep in the heavy air of the afternoon
-- a dog with a stone in its mouth, laughing and lolling.
In the summer-house night, where the wind sings through the woods
in the pitch-thick heat of the sauna, wet heat, burnished fresh
naked on the verandah, beer, a shared joke to the tune of the sea;
And everywhere, the warmth of people:
speaking a neighbour’s Castilian, in a kitchen laden with pancakes
the house chuckling, echoing to its own folk tale.
by Andrew Ferguson
