November 17

We had our third holiday of Autumn this week, variously called 'International Youth Day', 'Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day', 'Independence from Communism' (the extended falling of the Berlin Wall). It is convenient that our holidays follow chronology:
      Sept 28: St Vaclav Day (from 935 AD)
      Oct 28: First Republic (from 1919)
      Nov 17: as described above (from 1939 and 1989)

The poem below is not a commemoration--Jon's gift of Poetry magazine had a writer warm about too many poems in that ilk;)--but a reflection on a late morning walk when rifle shots shattered the serenity. Kiev was on my mind, a venue that has reaped two cross-country championships over the years, a city one parent deemed to dangerous to send her child; the 'less dangerous' places of the world was also on my mind, as well as the thrown-together poem I posted that day. Then, suddenly, our local and elusive wild boar gave the day and 'Day' and season a different consideration.

            November 17

Paint with any given color

than fire-engine red,

fill a playground flush with voices

belying kids now dead,

window visits with each other

(comme ci comme ça they end),

overrun the countless choices

these seasons cannot mend.

Blasts across the river echo

into squeals of wild boar,

a month shy of the solstice, days

were darkening before,

and now they’ll never see the glow

of sunrise in the spring,

rains for which an excavator prays

and joys new squealers bring.

Sniff to empathize the dog’s walk

and size up where you stand,

mere mammals on a mothership

floating through the quicksand,

looking for occasions to talk

with creatures bound and free,

I hear the hunters’ shots and grip

the collar pressed beside me.