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How to Save a Child Fleeing War?

Based on the fact that; “More than 10.5 million people have been displaced by the
war in Ukraine. That number includes 4 million who have fled abroad, half of
whom are children.”
                                                           —The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2022

i

Open your palms and hold gently
as if you are nursing a wounded bird left astray.
Look for places where a soul has been scarred
those deep ravines of grief slowly making their way.

ii

Gently inspect each layer of their existence,
as it has been shattered and ripped in places.
Look for scathed memories that have been fissured
seeking acceptance for a soul lost astray.

iii

Wipe their face pitted with streaming tears
as they make thin sluices–
for pain deeply carved in their heart
madly hoping for another brighter day.

iv

Unburden their soft shoulders
carrying remnants of a bombed house,
a last toy, and a crumpled family picture
they could barely save.

v

Try to lessen the ache of standing
over a mother’s grave, a day before,
which left them with the inability to voice any pain.

vi

Gently wash their grief of losing a definition of home
being branded a refugee in a span of a single day.
Comfort those soft feeble feet carrying anguish
of a thousand bleeding hearts looking for solace in a stranger’s embrace.

vii

Make sure there is no sudden noise, as minds of grief and terror
get triggered in innumerable ways. Refrain from asking questions
about leaving in the middle of the night, to an unknown place.

viii

Make sure to shower endless love and comfort
on this innocent soul whose life is paying the price
of a senseless war conceived in the devious minds
of tyrants and their greed-stricken ways.

ix

Don’t take them back to the streets
laced with the dead bodies of their loved ones
and their home now turned
into a place of pitted mass graves.

x

Try to teach the lesson of our faceless humanity
this world has to offer to a five-year-old orphan
holding a crumpled photo of their family,
in their soft supple hands, refusing to give it away.

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Deciphering the Madness

I ask the night, feverishly
as it rests on the caliginous back of time
like a thick rope going through
the wide-open mouth of a blind wall
rubbing against it, leaving marks on its existence.

Like a divine mark on the forehead
after kneeling before exalted Gods
countless times.

I ask myself.

Is it ever going to be alright again?

Thinking, as I take a second glance
at the empty streets of my house
longing for the clickety-clack of footsteps
warming its thick cobbled skin.

There is a method to this madness
that I used to discover—
every morning looking outside my window
counting hurried whispers of crowds
as they move towards the station like a mass exodus.

Now I long for those sights I normally abhorred
the state of normalcy of what it was before
as the light sheepishly makes its way
through thin wooden slats of my bedroom window.

Is it ever going to be alright again?

The pinging sound of the garbage truck
backing up in an alley,
soft paws scratching as they dig through dirt
in the almost bald spot of the park
joggers clad in sweaty bodies
heaving to take in another sliver of breath.

Is it ever going to be alright again?

I look at tiny finches weaving a nest in the oak
tree outside my apartment,
as they decipher this reigning madness
carefree weaving home for their future self.

I say to myself,
It is indeed going to be alright again.

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N(t)= N ⁰ e -𝜏 ln(2))t1/2

    Curioso

What is the half-life of sodium?
              Who cares? Just apply the formula.

What is the half-life of a refrigerator?
              The day before the warrantee expires.

What is the half-life of a rock?
              Longer than you, girl.

What is the half-life of an atom?
              No one knows. If you halve it, the world will explode.

What is the half-life of a head of hair?
              About forty years, the same as teeth, eyes, and ears.

What is the half-life of chocolate?
              Two seconds. Three if it hits the floor.

What is the half-life of a memory?
              It depends on whether or not you have a picture.

What is the half-life of love?
              Forever.

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Communion

    Andante gracioso

My hands, heavy as prayers
divide the yolks from the whites,
the stirring spoon, a silver sigh.
It is as if I had spent the whole day
crawling through the hours.
on my hands and knees
for I cannot forget my own
son’s freshly broken body
fragile as an eggshell.

Our sorrow
beyond void and hunger
has been too deep to swallow
longed for the taste of avgolemono soup,
to feel inside the deep scour of lemon
pungent, tart, and acrid.

Yet, somehow, tonight,
this task of creating a difficult soup
works its way by accident to perfection.

Our table set for four,
contains an empty bowl,
for we agree he is with us still,
lucent in our spoons.

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Out of Tune

    Mesto

The E flat key on the piano is             dead
the hammer         frozen
in place unable to strike the string

I press on the ivory                 over
and          over           but no
song    only a fistful of                silence

I want to play Our Love is Here to Stay
a melody I can lean into for consolation
but with each dead E flat the       tune             thuds

with a hiccupped           gap            in the             song
as if typing love          lyrics   on  a typewriter
without          an            L

never able to say the word           Love

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The Oldest Living Thing in Maryland

    Con Fuoco

When I looked in the fridge, there on the rack,
lying under the dried out and left-over cheese
now pocked and dark green,
a new patterned glass colored rust,
sheened with gold, and with blue,
and over the brew, I saw hatching
within, embryonic new colors,
a red rise of skin, and the lace of new wool
in soft green mellow-marsh and gasoline yellow.

I saw liquidy fingers reach and rise
to give girth to orange-ringed circles
of a long ago peach once firm-fleshed,
with now a glowing new pattern of hair,
tin-gray blue and thin growing.
No longer resistant, but quaggy, full blown,
a new resurrection, I think of my own.
Avanti      Avanti

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The First Year Without You (Winter)

    Lento

the first grace of snow
I move ceremoniously
transparent  starless

among my slow fires

.

new year’s first blizzard
endingsandbeginningsblurred
sky and earth reversed

.

in last summer’s pond
under twelve layers of ice
frog hearts beat    hang on      hang on

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Mystical Woodpecker

        Talthybius malomen

my binoculars are covered in pollen
—so it must be summer at last
and here comes that Woodpecker,
the mystical one,
the one i invented, for times like these

his feathers are made of steel
his beak is neither gold nor hope
pure bone on flesh
brings a sort of peace
in heat, dust, and sorrow

i saw him again today
when with trembling hands
i raised my ringing phone
that hideous Talthybius
i could not answer

i no longer listen
let time rip my bones apart
for now,
i’d rather watch my imaginary bird
through yellowed lenses

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A Gannet Named Nigel

        Morus serrator

                                     —The Washington Post by Karin Brulliard, February 6, 2018

should i be sad for Nigel
maybe bellow his loss?

he loved a cement
Gannet for all of his life

she was a decoy
a lure to bring more of his kind

and yet, for years he was faithful
he gave her fish and renovated their nest

she was everything for him season after season
his silent companion on an empty rocky shore

while her paint faded and no other gannets met
he waited by her side

for the sound of her and others
was his song different then in this void?

did he sing his throaty vibrato?
or did he wait to be far at sea to screech?

i don’t know these things
but i know something about his seclusion

too afraid to venture far
now i live with decoys—images that talk inside of boxes

where i share a few fragments
in the safety of these flat screens

like Nigel—

i feed my solitude the best i can
try to find faith in a setting sun

while i cling to this hope—
a world full of Gannets and their full song

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Sparrow Hawk and The Nester

         Fálco sparvérius

I nearly reached the water
the longest and shortest
journey— even if I have a thousand
legs in all

mornings were full of dew
at first, I didn’t perish,
so many died before
my brothers and sisters
did they climb the grasses
to take a drink?

the thirst in my pinchers
was deep, but I wondered
what a full swig of water
be? Would it be green
and taste of pollen?

thinking these water thoughts
pierced the worry of the Kestrel
—that Sparrow Hawk
flying so close by me day by day
I thought of those droplets
and imagined collecting each one
if I could burden the big water in me

the rest came in a mushroom
it was hollowed by age’s decay
just a moment for a dream
of currents and rain and joy
the fullness of lichens
bathed in moisture
and tiny spiders that taste of glory

now my body waxes and wanes
others will get there first
so I settle to watch that kestrel
finally take her requite

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