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.