Hello and Farewell to Siberia: “A Song of Heavier Things”

Two weeks ago today, I arrived in the USA after a year and a half in Novosibirsk, Russia.

While it was a relief to arrive after such a long trip (a 4-hour flight to Moscow, followed by a layover and a 9-hour flight to New York), I carried a sadness I didn’t know what to do with. I already missed everything — my colleagues and friends, my students, the cafés, the opera theater, the snow, the language, the warmth and simplicity of my apartment, the Catholic cathedral where I went to Mass. It had been such a rich time that returning felt like coming down from a breathtaking height.

To be honest, it still does.

Even as I remind myself that I came back to start something new, I miss Siberia. It pains me to remember all my routines and favorite places and to feel so distant from it all, as if it had been a dream.

But on the other hand — I am blessed in this sadness. It means my time abroad was worthwhile.

It could have been otherwise. It could have been a miserable experience I was happy to leave, or even a superficial year of tourism quickly forgotten.

Instead, it was one of the most meaningful travel experiences of my life (which is saying a lot — all of them have been pretty meaningful). In fact — it was the answer to a prayer I didn’t realize I’d prayed.

I’m going to share that prayer with you. It was actually a poem I wrote in my journal, long before I left for Novosibirsk. In it, I vented frustration with the life I was living, and I reached toward a future I could almost taste, but not imagine.

So in honor of all the people, places, and experiences that formed the answer to my secret prayer, here is the full poem, titled: “A Song of Heavier Things.”

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A Song of Heavier Things

Oh creeping, creeping
seeping feeling, feeling up my legs
and egging down my throat
with a coating of kitchen sink grime—

timing the ticks of the hours
and souring the eyes, the lies
the alibis, tithing to glass-gods
coddling vices, dicing the prices
financing my sins, yes, rotting the loom
and dooming me down,
down,
down.

I need
a good laugh, a long sleep,
vast skies and clear hours,
no screens, no glass-gods
calling me—

I need steam and frost,
birch and stream,
light and shadow dappled.
I need quiet nights and birdsongs.
Honest work, a child’s fears.

I need star-speckled nights like jeweled eggs
hollowed out to be filled.

Afloat in comforts, I miss the deep.
I miss the heavier fertile things
that settle, cool at the bottom, enrobed
in creekbed grime. They do not run with the stream,
but the stream draws life from them—
eroding me, enriching you.

But while the waters eddy at my toes and the mud
clings to my ankles and the wind on the face of the waters
slackens—or stills—
I lose sight of the depths and the heavier things
and fear the drowning,
fear the drowning,
fear the murky place where nothing lives
but the vodyanoi with his black tail coiling—
feeling up my legs and dooming me down,
down
DOWN…
his eyes dark and hollow, never filled, despite long sleep
and light and shadow dappled
and the laughter that tastes of a child’s fears
grown up.

Oh creeping, creeping
seeping coils,
you cannot—you will not—

You lurk behind screens,
coddling vices, dicing the prices,
egging down throats to coat the heart
in kitchen sink grime,
but you will not—

not while the wind is high
and the birch leaves rustle,
calling me, calling me
down
(down,
down…)

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Now it seems I ought to write a follow-up poem … something looking back in contemplation of beauty, rather than forward to an unknown. We’ll see!

What places loom large and live deep in your memory?

Have you written anything to honor them?