On re-reading, I thought all over again what a wonderful poem it is, so am sharing it with you again today. Finland<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n She returned to Finland with her children<\/span> (c) Victoria Broome<\/span><\/p>\n Reproduced here with permission.<\/span><\/p>\n Finland<\/p><\/div>\n \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n To read Victoria’s commentary and a bio (current as of 2012), click on:<\/p>\n Tuesday Poem: “Finland” by Victoria Broome<\/a><\/p>\n Victoria’s first collection, How We Talk To Each Other<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, was published in 2019 by Cold Hub Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week, I featured “On Writing”, from a post written in 2012. The immediately preceding post was Victoria Broome’s poem, Finland, which I featured as a Tuesday Poem on 6 March 2012. On re-reading, I thought all over again what a wonderful poem it is, so am sharing it with you again today. . Finland […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40539,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40530\/revisions\/40539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwrapped tight against the ice of the night.<\/span>
\nSo blue their throats ached.<\/span>
\nIt was a return to the old times, familiar pain,<\/span>
\nthe first crack of a river in thaw, black haunting<\/span>
\nof spindly trees, skeletal white morning sky.<\/span>
\nAir so sharp it sliced their hearts with grief.<\/span>
\nHer family never sent the gold they had promised,<\/span>
\nher husband bought book after book<\/span>
\nthat would not feed them.<\/span>
\nHer children became jewelled possessions<\/span>
\nlining her soul with love like the map of Finland.<\/span>
\nOne night he biked home to an empty house,<\/span>
\nall doors open, books piled neatly in each room.<\/span>
\nHe finds a library has no sound and dreams himself lost<\/span>
\nin the shell pink canals to his children\u2019s hearts.<\/span>
\nHis love will become a foreign language.<\/span>
\nShe settles them into the long winter,<\/span>
\ndark fatherless months waxing over them,<\/span>
\nstitching bright cloth, sharing words by the fire,<\/span>
\nshe coaches her children in their mother tongue.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Finland-300x179.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/How-We-Talk-To-Each-Other_Victoria-Broome-211x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"