Day 6

And when I step out the door
there is silence
save for the soft hesitant call of a tawny owl
in the woods on the knoll behind me.

A cold wind comes down the hill
and lamps map out the living
in the valley below.

Stars space themselves neatly in the sky,
distant and indifferent.

The light from the house soon ends,
scuffed out by sudden shadows
and darkness cloaks all:
the endless woods, the steep ravines,
the squirrels aloft, the deer, the boar
towering Falterona
and the rocky wolf’s den.

But here I need not fear
the thud of artillery,
the rapid fire of vicious Uncle Joe’s organ,
Katyusha who sings the Kharkiv dead to sleep.
No TOS-1 thermobarics,
no sniper,
no Iskander cruise missile
falling on Babi Yar’s dead,
no tank fire,
no self-propelled howitzer
blasting at me from 25 km away.

Just the silence,
the silence and the dark,
the tawny owl calling eternally
from the woods behind.
And the white noise of war,
a Twitterstorm inside my head,
incessant in my ears.