Three Poems by Helena Mesa

Love Letter to a Stranger, with Rain

Years ago, I read of an accident
in a country far from our own. The medics
arrived late, and as the ambulance
pulled from the curb, the crowd sang,
together, strangers making song
of an end many of us fear, and yet know
our bodies will meet in some way,
at some time. I’m saying this wrong.

This morning, a stillness—
a cabin and woods, miles and miles
but trees brushing shoulders and leaves,
and along one road, a swallowtail,
its ice-blue wings closing like a door.

Tell me how to reach you—which road
do I take, which swimming hole
will invite us, not stroke by stroke
along different shores, but where the spring
feeds from beneath and cools our feet.

When rain fell on the tin roof yesterday,
I thought I was in another country, the light
more aged than yellow. Let me hear you
tell stories, your voice a prayer
shedding light like stars after a storm.

Why wait until the siren resounds?
Why not sing like that now?

To the Stranger Up North

I’ll never fit between your palms.
Go ahead, see me as the dying galaxy
your telescope seeks, your one eye
closed so all’s gas and loss. I’m close,
but ninety miles can take days to cross
and water’s hungrier than sharks.
My people leave, play house
in cities they decorate with bodegas
and pastel schools. Their children
speak last century’s tongue,
study my curves on maps, and wait
for a border to open like a gate.
What sea respects walls, what walls
break the will of those living
on either side? Tunnel deeper, faster.
Rent a boat, sail closer to shore,
or not—I see you from here:
same storms, same parents
naming their daughters, same families
divided—same gravity, same anger—
each with her own madman
standing on the verandah and waving
his power like a child’s toy.

The Visit

What did you expect?
she never asked. And I
never said: I imagine
you came home after

your father’s burial, and stood
barefoot, on these tiles
wishing they were cold enough
after the long walk home.

At twenty, she packed,
flew first to Miami, then
to a city colder than any tiles,
and bore three daughters.

Across this city, arches
invite us into rooms and
halls that once stood.
Just yesterday, a street name

forgotten, one she knew
intimately, like her hand
pointing—there—like her
father’s hands—yes, there.

In one house, a tree
grows up its center like a beam,
pushes out windows
and eaves as it remembers

the sky’s promise. Each
branch spreads beyond
walls, seizes this space
that’s as lost to her

as it always was to me.
She wonders
how we could know a place
when there’s little left

to recollect. I wonder
how to know her
when there’s little left
that we would say.

Helena Mesa is the author of Horse Dance Underwater and a co-editor for Mentor & Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. She teaches at Albion College.