Five chestnuts nestle
picnic table planks.
Snow crusts garden plants.
Ice in bucket locks pine branches,
but pale green shoots
curve chestnut’s smooth skin.
We needn’t see the sun
to know it’s there,
remember burning bare arms
foggy days at the beach.
Chestnut flesh sweet and grainy
when roasted,
brown knuckles pawing the ground.
This is not a country of horizons;
too many trees.
But the swollen stream
will find the river,
the river will find the sea.

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David Thornbrugh is an American poet now living in Poland, getting some distance from America's Roman period and absorbing "Old Europe" values, sights, experiences. He wasn't in Krakow in time to attend Czeslaw Milosz's funeral, but has attended a reading of another Polish Nobel Prize poet, Wislawa Zymborska. He runs an open mic venue in a great local English-language bookstore in Krakow. Stop by if you're in town.
 

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