🤍today would have been...
🇪🇪
…My maternal grandfather Arved Viirlaid’s 105th birthday! (Instead of calling him “grandpa”, my sister and I always called him “Taadi.”) As I mentioned in my last post “🐺how i’ve stayed committed to my habits!,” part of my morning routine has been reading his poetry that’s been translated from Estonian to English. When he was alive, I didn’t speak much Estonian, and he didn’t speak much English, but I always felt a connection to him as my family encouraged me to follow in his footsteps as a writer. That, and if I had been born male I’m told I would have been given his name!
What’s interesting is that even though he passed away in 2015, now that I’m reading his writing as an adult, I feel closer to him than ever- which makes me so grateful for the written word! I’ve always felt like reading poetry or books is so intimate, because writers usually write alone, letting their most vulnerable thoughts fall onto the page…and then the reader is often reading alone as well, perhaps in bed or another cozy nook…two separate people perhaps years (or centuries!) apart, having a private, deep connection to one another, reminding us that we have more in common with each other than we may think❤️.
I think, today of all days, it would be fitting to share a poem I wrote a during the pandemic about a girl and her grandfather…so thank you, dear readers, for reading it if you choose to, and having this intimate connection with me🥰!
In The Dark I. we rested on our backs, absorbing what was left of the day’s sun through the rock at the top of a hill on salt spring island. the balmy pinks had melted into a velvety indigo, and you took your large wrinkled hand, skin thick from a hard day’s work a hard many years into my young palm, smooth from a summer of sand and pacific waters. you pointed out aquila, cygnus, and lyra, among constellations i could never remember. i listened to your soft, lulling legends of greek memories in the sky. your lores would end at the moon, lit by the biggest star in our snowy galaxy. do you see the face in its black seas? your voice a doughy bed that man is me, your company in the dark. II. years passed the coast salish earth, made of ancient granite and quartz remained protecting our footsteps. animals lent us their woods, oaks and firs guided a path, so that after we climbed at dusk grand father and daughter could descend like waddling raccoons in shadows, cautious but unscathed. III. my hand is now folding with its own timelines... it’s spring and the deer have been eyeing your cabin with their fawn in the back field noting your absence while i have been isolating with your syrupy and savory plants, waiting for you to come home. soon. maybe. IV. tonight through telephone wires i learned a hollow sickness brawny sickness cryptic sickness its only acquaintance machines during visitation hours won. grey pallid yellow walls greeted you at your final minute. did you know i wanted to be there as it stole your last breath for itself? did you know how i wished to warm your hand, as you had warmed mine, the blood from your heart pumping into my own through your fingertips? blood that now, i guess has turned cold. V. i run out the door and into the trees upupup the small mountain until i drop to my back in the old clearing on the old rock in our old place. i feel the absence of your touch as i grasp for any lingering sun in the ground. my chest is heaving. i open my eyes. a storm of stars welcomes me and in the middle is the moon is you my company in the dark.
❤️Happy birthday, Taadi! Your love of nature helped inspired this poem❤️.
xo,
kaja