Sarnate by Zinta Aistars

For the house on the Baltic Sea in the tiny village
of Sarnate, Latvia, where generations of my family
have been born, loved, have given birth to new
generations, have died, but live on in the blood
of generations to come.

Seven generations accounted for,

the tiny house hunches its stone shoulders

against the cool salted winds of the Baltic,

windows watching with tested patience

the swoop of gulls, the occasional tern,

the passing frame of a familiar figure, glimpsed,

then gone again, like the years,

the generations themselves, of women

watching from those windows,

shutters thrown open, curtains flaring,

their eyes focused on the blue horizon

disappearing in mist, or perhaps tears.

Even as they work, even as they cook their meals,

peeling potatoes, coring green apples,

kneading the soft dough of bread,

even as they nurse their babes to breasts

too long untouched by a man’s callused palm,

they watch—for the return of their mates,

always lured from their honeyed embrace

to that other unknown, to that misted horizon,

to those chests of uncounted gold,

to those women of untasted flesh, fruits

ripened by tropical suns, and the lure

of unfought battles testing muscle and grit

and flaming bravado baptized

by the burn of absinthe and mead,

the madness of dreams that can never be bought.

The house waits. The watchers at the windows

change with each generation, weathered

by the same sea, the same sun, the same salty breeze.

The women walk the white sand of the Baltic,

skirts flaring with the wind, hair tousled and sun bleached,

faces bronzed and eyes lined with the fine

imprint of gazing long against the sun. They bend

to finger each nugget of clouded stone,

rubbing the pad of a knowing thumb

across its wave worn surface, the resin

warming to their touch as they hold it up

to the amber light that will identify

its jeweled and enduring past.

They wear amber necklaces, beads

of amber molded to their fingers,

thick knuckled and gnarled like roots,

knotted amber eyes, clear as sunlight,

golden as honey, dangling from the lobes of their ears,

from wrists, clasped against white linen blouses,

evidence of that which survives

seven upon seven generations, and seven more:

the years of waiting and knowing

the horizon is but a line of dreams,

hopes that palpate the human heart,

the siren call that drives a good man to wander

but a woman to wait, in the wisdom

of seven upon seven generations

to know the virtue of a passing madness

always returns to a horizon seen from the sea,

blue with promise of a tiny house

with stone shoulders hunched against the winds,

and windows framing a face turned towards the sea

About the Author

Zinta Aistars is the published author of three books in the Latvian language. She is an editor for LuxEsto, the Kalamazoo College alumni magazine, and contributing writer to Encore magazine in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, and has published poetry, travel essays, stories, and articles in the United States, Latvia, England, Sweden, Germany, and Australia. Her work also appears on several ezines—including Flashquake, The Redbridge Review, milk magazine, Word Riot, The Surface, Serene Light, River Walk Journal, Bobbing Around, The Moon, Burning Word, Insolent Rudder, coilMagazine, Poems Neiderngasse, QuietPoly Writers Magazine, The Paper, Poetry Life & Times, WriteSight, and others. She is a literary publicist with Zeenythe Communications.

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