Riding in plain country
through dispersing flocks
of red-wings and robins,
contour flying, all of us,
with the smell of wood smoke
over the corn-stubbled fields,
listening for killdeer,
neighbors hauling firewood
in front loaders,
doves calling all day,
a city of a million souls
falls in Ukraine.
We turn away,
attached to the look of this sky
and the smell of this land,
living our life
in the place where we made it,
lucky and privileged
in the poetics of peace,
weak and ill-prepared,
ignoring a brutal world
because we can,
for as long as we can,
if we can.
 |
| From the bike at sunset |
—Top photo a screensave from the front page of The New York Times, 3/6/22
