Ukraine

cold comfort

who will hear our voices?

winter winds our walls
snow our blanket

old news now–
drowned out
by the latest atrocities

“Ukrainian Figurines” by Kirill Shevchenko (Groder) Image by Кирилл Шевченко from Pixabay

David, at The Skeptic’s Kaddish, supplied the above photo for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday this week. I recently ran across a “42” poem I had written and the form seemed just right for this prompt. The situation in Ukraine is full of questions with no easy answers.

I did these collages in my early days of blogging, when Marcy Erb and I did a number of poetry and art collaborations. The poetic excerpt that inspired this work was from Frederick Turner.

On the Death of an Infant

Latecomer, first to go,
Like the small arctic flower
Between the snow and snow,
The fragrance of an hour. 

Frederick Turner (b. 1943) 

Every day new things demand our attention–but let us not forget the people of Ukraine.

abundance

can we remember
the dance, the music?—when life
gathered us as one?

Selma and Colleen chose this Degas painting of Russian dancers, above, as the image prompt for this week’s #TankaTuesday. When I was looking through my archives for my own image to accompany my poem, I came across a collage which I had done for one of Sue Vincent’s photo prompts. I decided to use the same title–my wish for what the earth provides freely to humans, if they would only let it, honor it, nourish it–instead of destroying it with their selfishness and greed.

barren

I can’t dispute the Oracle’s words.

black blows the skywind–
raw shadowships raining
the bitter storm language of lies
into the bare breasts
of dead mothers

you ask for spring
and the music of love
when the sun is swimming
through seas of boiling blood—

what can grow here?

“There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.”
–General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Since Nina and I started blogging in 2014 I’ve posted far too much art about war.

always more why

This is my third try with the Oracle this morning. She was having no parts of anything but reality.

beneath here
the shadow waits–
whispers ache with pleading blood–

who can dream the black sky
into moonlight,
turn this time from its mad
worship of death?

our ship rocks through sleepless seas,
asking why the wind sings
only with the bitter tongues of hate