After the War (from Poems for Hungry Minds)

   A Ukrainian serviceman walked amid the rubble of a building heavily damaged by multiple Russian bombardments
near a frontline in Kharkiv, Ukraine (Photo by Felipe Dana/Associated Press)

     

The world watches, the free world hopes for Ukraine's freedom from struggle against its oppressor.  The following poem is one of my contributions to the new anthology, Poems for Hungry Minds. - CK

After the War

The time will come when we will be able to sleep,

but it will be after the war, after the victory.

                                 – Ukraine President Voldymyr Zelenskyy

  

When things get quiet again,

we will take a walk.

We’ll find a street

like that one off Weldon’s Circle,

with the coffee shop

next to the record store

where we first heard Tuxedo Junction

sung by The Manhattan Transfer.

Surely, there will be a street

like that one again.

 

We will remember a time

when the pieces fit –

when we could imagine

building a home of our own.

 

I took those years for granted

until they stretched into a decade

of dull routine –

the everyday greyness

of riding to work,

shopping for groceries,

watching the Nightly News.

 

We could numb ourselves

to rumors of war

until the missile strikes lit the night.

Crumbled concrete cascaded

from buildings to sidewalk

and into the streets.

Roadways crowded

with newly awakened refugees –

homebodies turned migrants.

 

Twisted bridges

bombed out buildings

neighborhoods in rubble –

we had seen it before on the Nightly News,

always in some distant land

until the war machine shattered our lives.

 

Baldwin Street! That was it –

The one off Weldon’s Circle.

The one with the record store.

We’ll find it again

after the war.

 

                       ~ Charles Kinnaird

  

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Poems for Hungry Minds, by the Highland Avenue Poets, is available on Amazon and at Barnes and Nobel.

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