Spring starts in the cellar. It’s still cold, the snow is deep, the light, fitful. The potato feels it first. And slowly extends a pale, tentative root. Downward, between its siblings, looking for the earth below. It’s time to grow again.
Summer is sweaty. Folding laundry by the river, she herself could do with a wash. Between the rocks, the gurgle reverberates, the ripples roll, and the river keeps on running. Like a bird in constant flight, like the blood in our veins, like breath.
Autumn is fruitful. The boy bear lollops on all fours, cramming berries into his mouth. Tongue testing, paws padding. The memory of the house above draws him back. But his mother scares him off, to keep him safe. Until it’s too late…
Winter is piercing. As are the Arctic fox’s eyes. The girl toddles out to meet him, offering a fish. The fox snaps, bone crunches, blood bursts from her thumb. He skims off over the snowdrifts, and she skis behind him, till the whole world is white.
These are tiny stories, some a bare half-page long, from the pen of a poet. Some are about people, but many more are about animals, birds, insects, even plants. Nature in the north is far more than human, and all connected. The language is far richer than in my own retellings. It’s a book to taste slowly, to pause between. I’d love to translate it! Let’s hope it finds a publisher in English soon. If you read Finnish, you can buy Mari Laaksonen’s Missä joet juoksevat direct from Aviador.
Translator, editor, writer, reader
found in translation 
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