Philip Burnham, Jr. writes of the Ukraine – the carnage – the pain, and yet perhaps a hint of beauty and transcendence.

Philip Burnham, Jr.

 

Flight 17: In the Ukraine

Bright fields of summer’s wheat grow tawny tall

In the Ukraine beneath July’s great days

Where those who fell a meteoric fall

In sudden, deliberate, brutal ways

Through a dark night to earth have come to lie

In battle’s field, raw conflict’s casualties

Without enlistment, and yet caught in flight

Not from but to another destiny.

They will not wait a harvester’s intent

To scythe the grain, grind flour and bake bread,

Whose sustenance prolongs this life of ours.

Here a separate gleaning – a descent

Of angels come to gather in the dead,

Raising their souls once more among the stars.

— Philip E. Burnham, Jr.

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