Greener Pastures
By Lora Berg
April 15, 2023
April 15, 2023
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How reassured those nomads must have felt to know they would be buried on their
beloved steppe, surrounded by father Balbal statues — each holding: in the right hand, a drinking horn filled with fermented mares’ milk, mountain honey and altai herbs; and in the left, a dagger at the ready. Flat-cheeked faces with moustaches still float above pointy beards. And the Balbals’ carved eyes offer beneficence, shining over aster fields. We don’t know where to go. Few of us know where our ancestors lie, or where we’ll be buried ourselves, if at all. I toss my dream of the steppes on paper, to join the others: pyramids in Giza, Chichen Itza. The Jewish enclosure in Père Lachaise. The Necropolis on Warsaw’s Okopawa Street. Watkins Glen, where I scattered my parents’ ashes. Somewhere to rest. Somewhere to hold our own. |
A current member of the Poetry Collective of Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Lora Berg writes with a light touch, sometimes on difficult topics. Lora has published a collaborative book with visual artist Canute Caliste, and poems in Shenandoah, Colorado Review and The Carolina Quarterly, etc. She served as a Poet-in-Residence at the Saint Albans School and holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins. Among hats, Lora has served as Cultural Attaché at U.S. Embassies abroad and lived in several countries.