syrinx

Ground Hogs day is also the Annual Feast of Brigid. And bloggers are being called upon to join a Silent Poetry reading in cyberspace.

I first found out about this newest form of celebration through some of my favorite knitting blogs: The Yarn Harlot and january one

My submission is a tribute to my danish ancestors who journeyed across the sea into a unknown continent and wound up in New Brunswick.

"No Trace Remains" from 'The Stone Cloak' by Shari Andrews

The garden that is Denmark
is at risk of being trampled
by soldiers and their weapons.
Taken bit by bit, while we watch,
hands tied behind our backs.
Our flag, the Dannebrog, is banished,
hidden in trunks in the attic
or beneath stones in the yard,
a secret map unfolded
only when doors are locked
and blinds pulled

Our only legacy, our children
falling exhausted in bed,
not from laughing and skipping
but from the burden, the stone cloak
they must pull over their bodies
in the early-morning darkness:
hay to be pitched,
cows to be milked, rows of
snapping, waddling geese driven to the pond,
mounds of eggs gathered in baskets
and left on doorstops, each apple ad plum,
cabbage and potato -- a tooth
we've had to pull from our bodies
and hand over to the landlord