The Summer Garden

—Saint Petersburg

It’s easy to imagine,

within the embrace of these dark trunks

and alabaster statues,

the swish of billowing dresses

and gentle voice of the empress

addressing her attendants.

It’s easy to imagine that any

compassion Catherine ever had

toward her legions of subjects enduring

outside these gardens, in the slant

light of Peter’s great city,

arose here, within these cool greens,

from birdsong, or the scent of a white

bloom, or the praise of leaves

in the summer breeze.

When history books are written,

what do they say of the influence of

skies, and trees? That the sun shone,

that the fury of hailstorms rained upon

royal crowns, that linden fell like dominoes

when heads rolled in the streets,

that the great siege of 1941 was overcome

because the weary could lie here,

beneath this soft green canopy,

and sigh out their hunger into the gentle air,

see it winged to promise.