Destination Grounds

Imagine it is 1917 and we are observers in Russia. The photographer Deborah Turbeville inspired me to write this.

fog lifts above the lake, pulling up once shore-bound trees

       distance muted voices, feign comfort but in truth ill at ease

          in a St Petersburg studio, a place crowded by history but with time shuttered out

ivy preserved facades and wallpaper crusted innards

emotionally crush any remaining doubt

home of improvised wives sitting pensive in lines of grey

black and white war survivors, age faded

but in truth now with nowhere to stay

men yearning still for a frock coated era of arrogance

now  with blunted influence simply witnessed with applause

around a discordant piano collecting dust, in a long musical pause

guardians of symbiosis long gone

now even pleasure and concurrence, seen as wrong

talons of the tsar lift coated bodies

of sleepers on cold and dirty ground

but unlike the siberian fog, their autonomy remains buried and earth bound