Steeped in the abundance of stories told

She grew

A hum of voices lulling her spirit

Into fullness

Repeating names

Describing places of long ago

An island,

Houses perched Precariously

On cliffs

Beaten by a Vehement sea

Bountiful Traditions, ice fishing

carving, and Dancing – a life

Of millennia –

****

Like a wash of color

Deeply embedded

In the fiber of her being

Woven into her flesh

Is a longing She can’t define,

Pointing to her ancestors

She explains

That is where they lived

Half the year, in the Winter

She herself, has never been,

Imagines, smells, thirsts

A life no longer lived

Yet beats on, in her existence

Courses through her body

Evokes memories

Which are not hers – But Are –

****

With the persistence of a Survivor

She tells you

Of this world lost

To the arbitrary western mind

how she wants to return,

like one robbed of her Belonging

Her inheritance

****