The basements were bomb
shelters,
the children cowered in corners,
the bombs sucked the oxygen from
the streets where lovers met for coffee
outside the restaurants.
And tyrants light candles to prove their orthodoxy.
The father and mother,
twin children a month old,
were taken from their tinies, leaving orphans
when a madman thought the dirt belonged to him.
And in the scratchy streets people lined up to take
the children home. Not for a night. Not for a month.
Not until children’s services showed up.
But for the length of family.
She had spent five years
in Seattle, but was Ukraine
through and through.
She knew English, she knew her country,
she came back in the middle of cluster bombs and
concrete parking garages melting in the heat of
one man’s rage.
Her skin jumped off her body every time
another siren sounded. And all she wanted was
to have her loved ones around her. Her loved ones
had been canceled by the menace of demonic claims
to borders and nothing else.
Nothing ever changes,
everything remains the same,
we are cursed to repeat the hubris that puts people in their place.
We do not know how to love the person close at hand
who believes Black Lives Matter, or transgenders deserve
life without snide remarks about bathrooms and penises.
We will not listen to the agonized voicings of Anthems
proclaiming equality and dignity.
We are smug and smokey when we name eunuchs devilish
dangers to God. We strangle the speech that only desires
to love our neighbor by wearing a mask that holds back the
virus that might infect their loved ones. We are ignoring
The body before us.
The body just like Jesus bore before us.
We are static when we should sing the chorus
that all God’s children’s got wings.
And the girl from Ukraine who knew the
Pacific Northwest,
only desires that, if we see the blue sky above us,
we should simply
cherish it.
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