Local bus from Tampere to Helsinki
As I board, the driver
asks for my passport
like he already knows
we will travel to another country.
Along straight highways
lakes shimmer under power lines.
Silver birches shake yellow leaves.
Dark clouds come with rain.
Beside me a young man reads
Learning Vietnamese in Finnish.
For a change of mood he keeps
Naomi Klein, steady on his lap.
I open the Kalevala (in English)
to read of other journeys here;
older ways of seeing this land.
And learn, in repetitions of three
in case you didn’t get it the first
or the second time around, there’s
a mortal cost to not saying out loud
the name of the thing that you want.
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