Updated: Mar 28, 2022
Equinox in Ukraine
March 2022
Spring’s coming—so the calendar says.
Fallow ground should be plowed,
new seeds bought, saved seeds planted.
Their fields supply our need for sunflower oil,
wheat for animal feed, sugar beets for sweetness.
The World Data Center for Geoinformatics
and Sustainable Development compares the climate
“to that of Kansas, slightly drier and cooler
during the summer and colder and wetter
during the winter.” Barley is the usual spring crop.
The source says nothing about unusual years.
Every day jubilant farmers haul Russian tanks
from their fields. One has planted himself
inside the hole on top. He waves a blue and yellow flag
as his neighbor in the green and yellow John Deere
tows the hulk away. He hollers gleefully (we can tell
his mood, even though we don’t know his language)
about the scrap metal payday that’s coming, soon.
In the north, Chernobyl’s sarcophagus gleams.
North of the border, caches of nerve gas mature.
The sun’s getting higher, the ground’s heating up
everywhere. This year’s crop will be sown between
bombs. Hasting hands cast seeds in soil strewn
with steel, watered with blood. Deadly serious,
a comedian has become president of the world.
Unsheltered
A folded four-year-old might
hide between the desk’s iron legs,
but duck-and-cover’s not enough—
never was, we’ve learned—
glimpsing splintered maple slabs
on steel frames, their storage cubbies
only big enough for a newborn pup
and his half-pint water dish,
or an outdated history book.
Before the bombs, a student might
have found a carved heart punctured
by an arrow, feathers bristling,
initials above and beneath.
Someone has filled the heart’s groove
with a teacher’s red magic marker.
The lower initials aren’t quite finished.
Does the engraving signal truth, or hope?
Still, the heart asks, what can we love?