Lost Songs of Grandma Katherine

Songs belted out in a moment of sadness while the sun stains the clouds in her colors chameleon Facing the sea as the ashes kiss sand letting the wind pull the songs off the land Grieving continues that year in the open Laughter seeps into the melody mourning Tales from her youth in Crimea's rich forest cast from our lips in the manner she taught us The time she was starving and ate poison berries then jumped down into tree limbs, waiting and merry Unconscious and limp in the bed of a stream That Turkish man came in a wood scented dream A gypsy by nature, a friend of her fathers, brought her back home to the village of his brothers. Or what of the time, on a frozen park bench she met the great Rachmaninov eating his lunch He pulled out a chocolate from his wool, jacket pocket and spoke of her beauty, like a good Russian mandate. When did the songs stop for her in her life? Was it when she was singing of a girl selling wares and her father took his pitch fork with a furious glare and pinned her, as he yelled without kindness hindsight for the song was a tale of a woman of the night? Or was it the war, the infamous war? Not with cruel Hitler, but the war of Great Katherine. The woman who held all her emotions within. From the moment the sheep closed his eyes in her arms She stoically built up her walls with alarms. She refused to love any, for leave her they would and she dug her feet into the earth where she stood My grandfather smiled attempting to soften the cold, vile stare which she shot him so often and I in my youth thought that I would discover this woman had love for me, like my own mother. But, as her ashes joined the sea she took with her, her chance to be a wife, a mother, loving grand and left her songs in her own homeland. I wish to one day laugh with her and sing aloud in mirth with her I wish for her innocence to be restored and one day to be, by her, adored.