A POEM by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger
The threat of war with Russia has been with me all my life. In a nutshell: The Soviet Union was formed in 1922, the year my father was born. It sent missiles to Cuba in 1962, when I was 4, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We had community nuclear drills. Some wealthy families build bomb shelters. In autumn 1983, when I was 24, the world was saved from potential nuclear disaster, which would have occurred due to systems not being able to tell the difference between an exercise and a real attack. Tensions were high all fall in DC. I remember going on my morning bike ride the day we were told there was a threat, and watching the sun rise, wondering if it was the last time. Thankfully, the sun did rise the next morning, and Russians and Americans were there to see it. The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, one of the years I was working in Europe. Russian and American colleagues all expressed relief. Crisis averted, we thought. The next year I went to New Year’s Eve in Prague. There was such joy in the streets. Now, an invasion of Ukraine. None of us want our children going on their last bike ride or worrying it will be their last.
This year, on Feb. 22, 2022, I wrote this poem to Ukraine.
AS THE CROW FLIES
To Ukraine
Today as explosions reigned,
A black bird flew from someone’s window
Across my t.v. screen,
The moment its wings expanded
Caught for all to see.
Today someone’s world was shattered
Today someone lost their home
Today someone shielded their children
Today someone fled for their lives
Today someone marched forward to defend them
Today someone watched their brother’s last breath
Today a neighbor went to get groceries
Today a business owner sent an email
Today a mom took her kids to day care
Today someone laughed at a joke
Today I wrote
Without shape or focus
Because I was remembering
The death toll of so many battles
Witnessed
Supporting the shattered lives as I could
Eyes straight ahead
Never averted
And here we are again
With someone so far but so near
Dying
Even as the crow lifts off,
Someone hiding in a subway station
That tomorrow they will call
Their only home.
Today as explosions reigned
I saw a black bird fly outside my window.
Even it has a home to return to
And it calls no country its own.
— Kathryn Brown Ramsperger
My heart aches Kathy. In the news about Ukraine this morning I saw a little girl crying in the arms of a police officer. They were in the train station and she was separated from her mother. I can’t get her out of my mind. I’m so worried for her and her heart broken mother and their country. Your poem tells the story of this child and so many more.
Beautiful expression of the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine.
Lovely Kathy, thank you.
Captures the meaning of suffering and quotidian lives in frank, tender, evocative ways, Kathy. Tears followed by some quietude after digesting the richness of the poem.
Thank you, Kathy. So true. Not a time to avoid “heavy.”
Though Paul McCartney wrote this about the civil rights movement here in the U.S. it was what I thought about after reading your piece.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free
Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of a dark black night
Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of a dark black night
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
And then Pete Seeger’s lyricsWhen will we ever learn?
I hope it doesn’t take almost the destruction of humankind for us to learn.