In The Woods

I miss the softened L
of my cousin Lisa's name
shaped by the mouths
of her refugee parents and mine
not the American ‘Lisa’ but

‘Lyeeza’, its L spreads middle
tongue touches center palate
sides tease eye-teeth lightly
‘Lyeeza’, whose Z holds back
just a bit, too

Lyeeza, born in a hollow
dug by her father with pick-ax and shovel
into the side of a hill hidden
behind a thicket
of brambles

in an uncharted forest only he knew
‘like the back of my hand’ he said
on the edge of a verdant land
claimed by two countries
invaded by a third

a hollow made home
where dozens sheltered, evading
for weeks and months and more
at times half stood while the other
half slept on pallets, prone

a dense forest on the outskirts
of a village with two names
which could no longer be found
thirty years later
on any map

a land whose people were not Lyeeza’s people
neighbors uneasy amongst themselves
who spoke two different tongues
neither one hers, and neither spoken
by their invaders

a village whose priest entreated
farmers to sell their produce
to the ones in the woods
instead of selling them out
it could have gone either way

a priest whose name
was memorialized by no one
until Lyeeza’s father
recounted the story
a lifetime later

place of birth? asks the Manhattan
marriage bureau clerk. What?
Where were you born, Miss?
Lisa blurts out the piace
she's been told all her life:

‘in the woods’