When I sit with Sophia at the kitchen table
It is always the same.
There is a chipped white plate of herring between us,

With its gold earring and its crown of hawthorn and laurel,
The pink beast was led through the village square
By the minister’s beautiful, black-haired daughter

A cool wind blows on summer evenings, stirring the wheat.
The wheat bends, the leaves of the peach trees
rustle in the night ahead.

My mother made figs in wine—
poached with cloves, sometimes a few peppercorns.
Black figs, from our tree.

Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with birdcalls.

They told her she came out of a hole in her mother
but really it’s impossible to believe
something so delicate could come out of something

Gravedigger of moths,
Prince of bedbugs,
Tuner of the harps of black ants,

Today the sun was shining
so my neighbor washed her nightdresses in the river—
she comes home with everything folded in a basket,

and listened to the little European nightingale
        singing amidst our homelessness
as if the twentieth century had never happened.

We walked down the path to breakfast.
The morning swung open like an iron gate.