Kuinka voit tietää?: How Can You Know?
My father said every year.
You, who were born without
needles of war in your mouth.
Without the blisters of worry
that rose and popped across
lake surfaces, spread like pus
over fields of barley through
slats of barns and city dwellings,
without chains of contagion
over your farmhouse door.
You, who can suck
on a slice of orange every day,
wear shoes wide enough so
your toes do not pinch,
whose nose never
suffers the sight of rotting
turnips in the cellar
or blighted cabbages in the field.
Rakas Isä,
Those needles have left stitches.
I’ve shoved my toes into those tight shoes,
and pressed your wounds to my lips.
Louhi Pohjola was born in Montreal, Canada, to Finnish immigrant parents. She was a cell and molecular biologist before teaching sciences and humanities in a small high school in southern Oregon. She tends to write poems focused on the intersections of human behavior and the natural world, in particular, with black holes, the cosmos, and octopi. She is an avid fly-fisherwoman and river rock connoisseur. Louhi lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and her temperamental terrier. The latter thinks that he is a cat.
The Marbled Sigh 