For the house on the Baltic Sea in the tiny
village of Sarnate, Latvia, where generations
of my family have been born, loved, have 
given birth to new generations, have died, 
but live on in the blood of generations to come.

Seven generations accounted for, 
the tiny house hunches its stone shoulders 
against the cool salted winds of the Baltic, 
windows watching with tested patience 
the swoop of gulls, the occasional tern, 
the passing frame of a familiar figure, glimpsed, 
then gone again, like the years, 
the generations themselves, of women 
watching from those windows, 
shutters thrown open, curtains flaring, 
their eyes focused on the blue horizon 
disappearing in mist, or perhaps tears. 
Even as they work, even as they cook their meals, 
peeling potatoes, coring green apples, 
kneading the soft dough of bread, 
even as they nurse their babes to breasts 
too long untouched by a man’s callused palm, 
they watch – for the return of their mates, 
always lured from their honeyed embrace 
to that other unknown, to that misted horizon, 
to those chests of uncounted gold, 
to those women of untasted flesh, fruits 
ripened by tropical suns, and the lure 
of unfought battles testing muscle and grit 
and flaming bravado baptized 
by the burn of absinthe and mead, 
the madness of dreams that can never be bought. 
The house waits. The watchers at the windows 
change with each generation, weathered 
by the same sea, the same sun, the same salty breeze. 
The women walk the white sand of the Baltic, 
skirts flaring with the wind, hair tousled and sun bleached, 
faces bronzed and eyes lined with the fine 
imprint of gazing long against the sun. They bend 
to finger each nugget of clouded stone, 
rubbing the pad of a knowing thumb 
across its wave worn surface, the resin 
warming to their touch as they hold it up 
to the amber light that will identify 
its jeweled and enduring past. 
They wear amber necklaces, beads 
of amber molded to their fingers, 
thick knuckled and gnarled like roots, 
knotted amber eyes, clear as sunlight, 
golden as honey, dangling from the lobes of their ears, 
from wrists, clasped against white linen blouses, 
evidence of that which survives 
seven upon seven generations, and seven more: 
the years of waiting and knowing 
the horizon is but a line of dreams, 
hopes that palpate the human heart, 
the siren call that drives a good man to wander 
but a woman to wait, in the wisdom 
of seven upon seven generations 
to know the virtue of a passing madness 
always returns to a horizon seen from the sea, 
blue with promise of a tiny house 
with stone shoulders hunched against the winds, 
and windows framing a face turned towards the sea.