Eat this.
There is not
much time for eating. We
fight and
food is scarce and
getting scarcer.
Maybe this is
our last supper? Perhaps
the world is ending?
This shattered bone-bread
is bodies of our people –
fallen, falling
bread crumbs and
scattered black seeds of sunflowers.
Citizens who are
dismembered sleep now, never
to waken again, cold, voiceless
in the wet snow of war. Dazed
confused, forlorn lovers, lonely
and afraid
seek one another. Search
where the sky is collapsed.
One
perhaps an orphaned child in
a heavy, winter coat
or maybe a bundled, homeless cripple
trudges away. Where do the
old and the sick go to hide?
Drink this.
Who knows if
and when we might drink again?
Press your lips with us to
the breath and tear-stained cup
and taste the bittersweet of
what it takes for
some human beings to
be allowed to be human.
Humans….
This is the blood
of our people – spilling, lamenting
along bombed out
streets, blown buildings and
the fields where
once sunflowers grew. Tall
golden witnesses to bygone peace.
We are dying in Ukraine
for freedom.
The whole world is watching.
We are dying.
David Sparenberg is the author of CONFRONTING the CRISIS: Essays & Meditations on Eco Spirituality. He is a teacher of existential ecosophy and Eco-poet who lives in the Pacific NW of the United States.
