When you arrive at a home in Finland,
they will ask you to leave your shoes at the door.
They will usher you in where the table is set
with seven kinds of baked goods—berry pastries
and un-iced pound cake, four kinds of cookies,
and braided sweet bread with cardamom. They will ask you
to sit, and regardless what time of day it is,
they will pour you coffee, dark and rich.
With the first cup of coffee, you eat the sweet bread.
With the second cup, you eat cake.
With the third cup of coffee, you eat the pastry.
With the fourth, you try everything else.
It is polite to try everything. It is polite
to go back for more.
The ritual might take all day.
I should like to serve you poems this way,
with your feet bare and with nowhere else to go.
We could nibble the poems together,
feeding some deeper hunger that so seldom
is satisfied, the kind of hunger that cannot
be sated alone. Like the Finns, we would hold
lumps of sugar between our teeth when drinking in
what is dark and bitter. But drink it in we would,
cup after cup. There is so much to be read
between the lines, and we would let
all the unspokens join us at the table.
Not everything must be said. The midnight sun
would not set, and we would go
for a walk, perhaps pick gooseberries,
then rest a while, before
setting the table again.