Ventspils, Latvia

Early morning and the forest path is empty
but for the woman sweeping with a broom of sticks

moving leaves off the packed dirt with twigs cut
of black wood. And the city may not see her

like the last worker doing her chore on a Soviet morning
dusting the dust from the trail gathering leaves

into dark shadows. She sweeps in long curves
in a kind of dance solitary and intent on her partner

the anima in a veil of trees. Like clockwork each day
in my self-absorbed run I come upon her.

She does not look up nor move more than a foot
to either side. But the path is her line through history

the forest her country loosed from the grip of commissars
and she sweeps with a sense of freedom.

If I or the city do not see her it does not matter.
She cleans where once she moved dirt and leaves.