Urals

It isn’t just the old women who pray

far from any cathedral or priest in a language

holy as snowlight, a language of winter

and ice, tundra and balalaika, apples bruised

bright red against the white, the way candles

shine against the dark, flame gold as honey

poured into a cup. And then the honey

combs hidden. Not even the babushkas pray

in spring, more they thank the candles

as they light them, a flame to gauge

the gravity of grace, to heal the bruised

and beaten, to be blessed for when winter

buries the earth or does it bandage? Winter

that turns the hands blue. Pour the honey

into the tea for the child, the one with bruises

from the mother’s switch, the one that prays

she does not say a bad word, a word in language

she did not know its meaning hurt. Candles

her mother lights above the stove, candles

for the father traveled since the last winter

for work in a country where the language

he did not speak, a country called a land of honey

and milk. Who puts honey in milk? What wage

he makes he wires home, home to the bruised

mountains where wage work is rare so they make booze

the farmers in wooded stills. Wax is poured for candles

by women, woven flaxen wicks, no priest to pray

or God to blame or repent for this long winter

when bread was short. The young without money

sent off to fight in a country where the language

is near to their own spoken, but not their language

that their mothers sang to the balalaika. The bruised

ink on the list of the missing, the fields of honeysmakepeace101@yahoo.com

colored chamomile, poppies bloom like candle

flames down the mountainside. To forget the winter

and wrap one’s hands around her son as if she prays

that every bruise may fade, that the mothers praying

in their language bring an end to war by winter,

and all shall be honey in the mountains lit by candles.