an exercise in catharsis (sunflowers)

 four months out from a sunflower bloom.

somewhere outside kyiv is a clearing, budding

sunflowers poke through the snow; turgid,

a burned-out  BTR rests its hull against the earth.

all falling through my dreaming, I.

Monday. & no talking clamour outside

will interrupt my doomscrolling. kharkiv

is on raging clusterbomb rubble fire. besides

sirens, missiles, dying and wailing, whistling, crying

there is a deaf silence.

Sunday, plunging headfirst into combat footage,

a corpse overturns then a man’s face, vanished –

a helmet where his eyes should be. an age

no more than 23. now frosty under dreamless sunflower field skies,

grandma weeps in bryansk.

it’s Saturday; realising I only know two ukrainian words,

returning to the one ukrainian song I know,

shum. shhhhhhhhh. like spring on the trees; it’s

noise. under the pale whistle of distant fire there is only shadow.

only shum and shadow.

shaking on Friday to the youth of an invasion,

a coated woman, in this video on loop, offers seeds to soldiers. offers

sonyashnyky. soldiers and seeds and pockets and curses.

so sunflowers will shoot from conscript flowerbeds,

seeing in that turgid fell outside kyiv there is

shhhhhhhhh. only shum.