"Sergeant Daria Filipieva," "'Some Casualties,'" and "Voices"

Sergeant Daria Filipieva

A Ukrainian army combat medic who
was decorating her new apartment in Kyiv
with pink carpets and fluffy curtains,
now sleeps in the basement of
a building converted into the headquarters
for the Territorial Defense Forces,
muttering to herself during the constant
thud of bombs the screech of
missiles, remembers sitting in the middle
of the shattered glass of her new
apartment thinking "I will help everyone
I can," during a brief respite, and now
teaches soldiers how to do tourniquets as
she holds her country in her medical kits,
her assault rifles, and her heart, reminding
us that strength lies within ourselves.

"Some Casualties"

are reported including a 7 year old child.
Is she or he merely a casualty in
the drumbeat of war, the reports of
statistics, of the number of refugees
fleeing, the number of bodies
found on the streets with booby traps
inside them, the child who once
held his family together, who could
laugh, play, read his books, was
busy with his friends? But there are
no friends, just an emptiness,
and fear, a lasting trauma.

Voices

There are so many different
voices, the simplicity and repetition
of propaganda speaking to its people's
emotions in Russia the way
 
the right wing in our own country
does in social media. Yet President Zelinskyy
speaks to our Congress, to the heads
of state in Britain, France
 
and Germany in their own political
language, and continually to his
own people, the voice of resilience
and moving forward together,
 
of encouragement and peace,
after the sobs of the thousands
of children that were forcibly taken
away to Russia, the weeping
 
of loss after a bombing. Then
in the midst of a blackened
landscape with row upon row
of destroyed apartment
 
buildings, the streets paved
with rubble, an empty landscape
where a solitary man sits on a chair
with the enveloping music
 
of his cello filling the air as if the sky
were a clear blue, letting us hear
that the voices of harmony, and
of hope cannot be silenced.