Tuesday, June 06, 2023

THE WIND SWEPT AWAY

by Jan Zlotnik Schmidt

After viewing photographs of destroyed towns in the Ukraine




The wind swept away 

father’s humming 

mother’s crooning 

her cleared throat  soft lullabies 

her rosaries and prayers. 

 

The wind swept away 

babies’ babbling 

children’s puzzled cries 

scalded and scarred hopes 

wheat fields turned to blackened earth.    

 

The wind swept away 

unfinished stories 

hushed words   secrets 

that once wormed their way 

into corners of rooms. 

 

The wind swept away 

mud planked floors  foundations 

cracked plaster walls  

shattered window panes 

bombs exploding like falling comets 

 

In a fierce whirl of fire and ash   

the wind swept away    

histories, memories, time 

present or to be known     unfettered dreams      

Only voices of survivors remain  

asking in garbled tongues:    

 

What is the difference between 

dying and living?  Where do our shadows take us? 



Editor’s Note: This poem arrived at The New Verse News just as we heard news of the dangerous breaching of the dam near Kherson. Although the poem’s central image is wind, it might just as well, we fear, be water.


Jan Zlotnik Schmidt  is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz where she taught creative writing, memoir, creative nonfiction courses as well as American Literature, Women’s Literature, the Literature of Witnessing, and Holocaust Literature. Her poetry has been published in over one hundred journals including The Cream City Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review,  Phoebe, The Chiron Review, Memoir(and), The Vassar Review, The Westchester Review, and Wind. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000). Her chapbook The Earth Was Still was published by Finishing Line Press and another, Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time,  by Word Temple Press. Her volume of poetry, Foraging for Light,  was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019.