Joanna Wiebe

You, seen through windows:
triangle of your elbow,

bright wing of your hair.

Joanna Wiebe, 1984

The Funk family windmill, in the Mennonite Brethren Ukrainian village where our family used to live, until 1923. This is a drawing I did about forty years ago, from a photo, for my uncle Jack. My cousin Jo-Ann has it now.

This poem is an attempt to write in the voice of my grandmother, Anna Janzen Funk. My mom says I don’t quite have it yet, but I’ll keep trying.

How shall I start?

There is an oak in Sagradowka

with many children and deep roots.

Seven hundred years old,

they say. I married Jacob in Sagradowka,

the first two were born there.

Those shaded streets, in any weather, were home

to me, my mother, her mother, her mother.

We heard the leaves, noisy in a changed wind.

Jacob went to turn the sails of the mill,

while I cooked the cabbage,

thought about revolution.

Canada, I heard. Go to Canada.

But what sense does it make to move an old tree?

You have to cut the roots. Break some eggs. Lose seventy million

(Suschen was one).

Jake came back from the mill.

We’re going to Canada, I told him.

Just take courage, I said.

It is cold today,

here on the Saskatoon River,

forty below zero.

The garden is black.

Susan is here with the children,

Frieda will come for Easter.

Jack’s oaks are up to the roofline.

Ann made borscht and brought it in a jar.

Katie is moving along in her new life.

God is still alive.

I am alive

in Saskatchewan.

Joanna Wiebe, 2006

Our son is sleeping now,
arms flung out,
fluttering smiles.

Did he know, as he made up his mind,
pulling from a grab-bag of genes
his red-gold hair, steel-blue eyes,
a mobile mouth, a fringe of toes;

Did he know about the wars and rumors of wars?
microwaves, plutonium, dirty rivers, sterile earth,
careless politicians?

(the list is endless, I could go on and on.)

I will tell him our family histories;
his great-grandfather’s trek through no-man’s land,
escaping white and red fire,
crossing the ocean,
stepping onto the train with his samovar, his wife, his children,

hope in their eyes.

How secure my mother felt
in the backseat of the family Buick,
crossing the frozen river,
singing,
driving home to Blaine lake, Saskatchewan, Canada
after church!

Another legend for our son:
his father’s rush to freedom,

dashing over the beach with a coyote,
government helicopters writing light on the sand,
running for three days, without food, to Los Angeles.

How happy he was to live in a house with drawn shades,
to work,
to learn,
to try to dream.

My son uncurls his hand,
a starfish beached on my breast.

These family histories impel me;
I shall begin teaching him our languages.

Joanna Wiebe, 1979