here is a poem I jotted down on the trainride, the first I have ever shared with anyone...

Bucharest to Petrosani on an Evening in May

Sultry afternoon turns to balmy dusk as ever expansive plains give way to ragged hillsides
As countryside flies by it is the images that are too fleeting for the camera to capture that are the most foreign and,yet, I wish to be most indelible

Neighborhoods of tents formed from wool blankets and salvaged tree limbs
A spring foal just discovering its running legs dashing around a horse cart loaded with scraps of metal
Campfires of burning refuse dot the rich brown fields
All of these individual images flash through my vision- blur together into an impression that these people live lives that I have only envisioned
Liives that have closer ties to the earth than I will ever feel
Lives painted with the rosu of poppies, galben of ripened corn, and portocalu of not quite ready tomatoes, against a canvas of cloudy alabastru sky

The question grows in my mind, how can I add these colors to my red white and blue life, one that I have outgrown, and yet in so many ways am homesick for
My heart will grow used to these colors, will wear them on its sleeves until they become worn in, like an old thrift store sweater…