Two lives, fragile
as spiderwebs, light
as dawn’s birdsong
are yanked away with a bomb back
into Mystery.
Crushed pelvis, they said, hip
pulled off its moorage,
where the skull of an
almost-born engaged in life’s
potential met the same finish
as that pelvis…a word
better made for berries
pressed into syrup, for grapes
dreaming of wine: crushed.
What is lost matters
between two failing pulse-beats,
among disconnected
bones,
where ditches of blood
lay open to places sanguinity
should never go,
where no poetry is even
slightly
adequate leaking from
my lapsed pen or along
the drowning corners of my eyes.
J. Pratt-Walter ©2022
This is about the Ukrainian pregnant woman from a bombed
hospital.
First the baby, then the mother died. Inspired by an AP shot seen round the world.
