i came upon the soviet border...

i came upon the soviet border...

i came upon the soviet border by way of helsinki.

under the lifted gates, across the threshold, 

i knew in my heart lay a fallow field of permafrost.

no hummingbird dared fly into a metal net.

slaughtered green hope and massacred dictionaries

were all that remained in that abandoned Arctic Circle town.

limbless daisies, haunted bee-less honeycombs

gradually grew up around that discarded Lada, a

ripped shirt remnant clung for life to an AM antenna that

tried in vain to tell the outside world what went down, but

its calls went unanswered.

nobody was going to answer.

behold the laughing moon

frozen in the sky forever.