Late Winter (Poem)

Late Winter

Palm trees in El Paso

are haloed in snow

 

rarer in mid-March

than the Russian tanks

 

bombarding a Mariupol shoe

factory, the psychiatric

 

hospital, a maternity ward,

apartments emptying to

 

missiles. A hotel sauna, 

a subway — deepest space

 

underground — targeted 

humanitarian corridors

 

hemmed with smoking autos,

plastic bags and rolling

 

luggage left behind.

Unknowing, toddlers

 

learn a new version

of the old game of hide-

 

and-seek among little Putin's

soldiers. The trains run

 

east with food and water.

The trains run west with

 

mothers, wives, the too-

old, the under-eighteen.

 

What would help most is

another poem from Ilya,

 

read aloud in the square

in Odessa; not sandbags,

 

not Molotovs, but arms

to run into, fingers brushing

the blush from soft cheeks

on this late winter morning.

 

Rev. 3-14-22