For Ukraine

A poem

Photo by Diana Vyshniakova on Unsplash

There is a bird
that snatches
my voice
each morning.
He is a tiny bird
his feathers a simple brown
the color of a priest’s cassock
or the earth.
Sometimes
the dawning sun
catches tips of blue at the edges of his wings
or the crest of his head
This morning his song is one of sorrow
He sings of war
and the death of truth
for truth is the first to die in war
He sings of cruelty, of sacrifice
the cowardice of might pitched against the…