HOLDING ON IN IRPIN, UKRAINE
(response to April 7 photo and article by Tim Judah in NY Times Book Review)
As I watch those people
crossing the wooden plank
in Irpin trying to escape
under the concrete bridge
catching their collective breath
egged on by soldiers to cross
The rushing river with plastic
bags and knapsacks, carrying
their food, being led like children
to cross the current, the disabled
the elderly, the lame, the weak
of heart as Russian drones
hone in to attack them as targets
I think what do I have to fear?
My neighborhood break-ins,
homeless camps, hot-wiring
the ignition, broken glass, but
really, no Kristallnacht to speak of
the piling up of trash and plastic
is nothing compared to continuous
shelling, missile barrages, intense
artillery all around them.
As they cross the wooden bridge
to escape while a soldier holds a
woman's hand above as though
they're dancing a minuet--
to be stopped at any moment by
a shell, a missile, a gunshot
to rip their fragile dance apart.
WILL SHEEP SAFELY GRAZE
Away from gunfire, mortar shells
Israeli bombardment--
turning meadows into headstones,
craters, churning earth into sea.
How to deliver us from assaults
on our senses as we see through
our rectangular vision the tanks
that trample our fields, the infantry
of camouflage that tries to hide
where there is no refuge, O give us
safe haven, a place to graze
far from here where the
hare is not in their cross hairs
and the earth is not a firing range
and we are not target practice for
soldiers who Netanyahu sends
to scorch our homes, tear up
our flocks who after all are here
only to protect the shepherds.
EVENTIDE
This evening comes early
in the fog of peace
here in Tacoma, far away
from Gaza, the Middle East.
I doze on the couch
a refugee from Budapest,
a tired traveler who rests
against an embroidered pillow.
Not a Coronation Mantle
silk restitched by Queen Zita
in its beautiful afterlife, now
under glass beneath fingertips.
I retrace the mantle, following
the patterns as I do the trees
this evening in this haze--
like a mantle blanketing us.
Different worlds, linked together
into chains that bridge
Buda and Pest, we walk across
from Hungarian to English.
Where the river flows south then
east through Romania, Serbia
and on to the Black Sea, where
Russians have been bombing Kiev.
