For dVerse Poets Pub – Where Grace is our host.
Our challenge is to write a descort, experimenting with, for example: varying line lengths; changing rhythms or meters; inconsistent rhyme schemes; different stanza shapes; shifts in voice or perspective; fragments alongside complete sentences; the use of another language; or dialect or unusual visual arrangements on the page.
Poetry Form: Descort
Two Homes
I come from rain.
From mountains leaning over fjords,
from green folded into green,
from winter darkness
and summer nights
that forgot
to become night.
I come from words
that still rise first
when I am tired—
hjem.
Home.
A small word.
A certain word.
Or so I thought.
Then August came
with suitcases
and children
and a promise:
one year.
Just one.
Un año.
The island laughed.
Here, the earth is not soft.
It is black stone,
red stone,
volcanic bone
breaking through dust.
The wind does not whisper.
Viento.
It pushes.
It rattles windows.
It carries sand across roads
and salt from an ocean
that refuses
to be background.
Norway rains inside me.
Fuerteventura burns beneath my feet.
Rain.
Sol.
Fjord.
Volcán.
Hjem.
Hogar.
Which one
am I supposed
to choose?
I still remember
the smell of wet forest,
snow beneath boots,
mountains reflected
in dark water—
but now I know
the silence of barrancos,
the green doors,
the fishing villages,
the way evening waits
until the heat loosens its grip,
the Moon rising
over an Atlantic horizon.
Sometimes
when I say home
I see two places.
That used to feel
like betrayal.
As though loving one
required leaving
the other behind.
But perhaps belonging
was never meant
to be tidy.
Perhaps the heart
does not understand borders.
Perhaps—
perhaps
—I am not standing
between two homes.
I am carrying both.
Rain
y sol.
Fjord
y volcán.
Norwegian words
beside Spanish ones,
north
inside south,
the woman who left
still walking beside
the woman who stayed.
And somewhere
between those two shores,
the Atlantic
keeps no argument.
It simply holds them.
Author’s note:
Hjem — Norwegian: home
Un año — Spanish: one year
Viento — Spanish: wind
Sol — Spanish: sun
Hogar — Spanish: home
Volcán — Spanish: volcano
Y — Spanish: and
Barrancos — Spanish: ravines/gullies
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With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
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