A Sense of Place

I’ve been studying abroad in Copenhagen, since mid-January. A few days ago, my literature class traveled to Fanø, an island on Denmark’s westernmost shore with a populace of ~3,000. Our class was prompted to write about the sense of place we felt while there, and these are my musings.

Venturing across this foreign landscape
in an unsuccessful attempt
to translate my perception
of a place I don’t know
into words that take up pages.

Will this synthesis of words
resonate outside my own head,
I wonder.

People with different histories
congregate here,
where history is part of the present.

An island connected
yet far removed.

An invisible thread links us
to these vignettes of experience.

Ephemeral moments,
eternal impact.

The tide of
the Wadden Sea
as subject to change
as my perception of it.

I am the shells, the rocks,
colored by the seabed
and changing tide,
washed away every instant.
Transported
somewhere new.

A sea so shallow
yet deep in history.
Countless stories harbored
below its surface,
its history integrated
into the present.

Nothing here is
carved in stone,
except the names of
the souls who built this town.

Tak, the headstones read.
And in the spirit of thanking,
I thank this place, too.

Seemingly ordinary,
yet distinctively itself.