Poem of the Month
Looking at Ukraine from McNeill Bay
I sit with a half-empty coffee mug
looking at nature’s raw beauty.
I came here from peace to find more
and such I have in an empty bay
with eddies like the tired glass-patterns
of a well-pulled, well-drunk pint
and the gravelly hiss of the continuum
the only sound in a grey-still morning.
In that far yet near place of despair
they are scraping shallow graves
with worn hands and grief-worn hearts
as more rockets scream in
and dirty food is scratched together
in blasted basements as babies cry …
So how and why did my flying soul escape
into a so secure time and place
where problems focus on irrelevancies
like where I choose to eat
and which warm sweater to wear
but where anger fights with compassion?
Eagles begin high-pitched conversation
before I leave the beach in search of news
and return again to the vain hopeless quest
for slivers of optimism amongst carnage
that will assuage my irrational guilt
while they cringe in familiar fear …
and I sit here in impotence
and pour another coffee.