Finland

Turku, your memories return.

Past, what are you worth?

Searching, recollecting, collecting,

piecing shards, breakages together,

the ferry knifing harbour ice,

carrying friends away at night,

our headlamps flashing farewell.

We drove you shivering through fog

back from Helsinki, woke to see

wooden cabined houses, remains

of an old burnt town across the street:

Newland Road, Uudenmaankatu,

where drunks staggered on Fridays,

splashed their alcohol coupons,

fell on the pavements, snored.

Skol! Are we talking or drinking?

Strange land, cold, quiet country,

waking to beauty in late May

maple buds exploding bright,

clean streets, spring mush gone,

no night freeze, day thaw, snow

creaking underfoot at ten below.

In January’s brief light, the sun

rose in one window, dipped in the next.

Not like summer, dipping to rise,

in the same adjacent windows,

yellow skies, saunas at the shore,

no more skating on skis

out on an icy lake, edged,

warm with dancing memories,

the beauty of snow laden firs.

Or we trudged through spring water

lapping a foot of ice beneath,

circling fishermen’s twig-marked holes.

At Easter we drove our empty car

over half-frozen sea near Kotka,

hoped the ice would hold.

No bridge back from the island,

from the haunted house adjacent,

noise of a gate in an empty field,

a knock at the door of an empty house.

No one there, in full lamplight,

the phantom came round the back,

not from the field our hostess said.

So back to Turku, grey castled city,

streets I can hardly remember,

no corridors - rooms, people, yes,

Inna, Raila, Rolf, Grace, Kalevi

Jean, Nils, Tua, Lars, Eva, Antony.

We parted with young children

running low on petrol, crazy,

high through the Jotenheimen.

That was another haunted land,

huge boulders, scattered by trolls,

low sun, dark drop into Bergen.

Warm, long ago now, words, names,

not friends return, gone,

mostly perhaps. We were wrong

not to return, not even once.

.

©Terry Hodgson2020