What Are Years?
By Broeck Wahl Blumberg
"There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen." — Lenin
It is calm here in New Jersey, just passing snow, ice, wind.
Inside my apartment, I am learning from a doctor who acts as a friend
a prescription for the next years, my last years.
Like me, he is an incrementalist, in politics, in health,
unlike our country where only flashy total change attracts.
Make one change, see how the whole system adapts
and if the unintended consequences are positive --- that is wisdom.
The Wise men reached Bethlehem only slowly, following the stars.
But even as we talk over coffee, in Europe, decades cascade
as Putin inflicts the chaos of war on neighbor,
ranting as Hitler did, a wolf. Chaos as children holding
stuffed bears shelter, hide, in subway stations, instead of ride to school.
Putin's lies echo here as our once and future
would-be king praises the wolf: he has no fealty to our country,
no support for our current, duly elected President.
Two thirds of our citizens believe he would have been more
likely to block Putin's war.
Can our memory be that short?
A flash of lies across our screens displaces real maps,
displaces people holding suitcases who dodge real bombs,
displaces our own history even as we live it.
Joseph Brodsky, Carlos Milosz, those who perished in the Gulag
courageous Solzhenitsyn who wrote their history,
Lech Walesa, Witold Pilecki, Vaclav Havel,
the 6 million dead Jews of World War II
even on the ground where tanks now mass and move--
Echoes.
This day, my own decades have been lightened.
This day, Ukraine's time has darkened.
Broeck Wahl Blumberg is a resident of Montclair, NJ, where she participates in the The Write Group. Her work has appeared in Expressive Writing, Shrew, The Meadowland Review, Stillwater Review, THE CRAFTY POET, and as part of an art exhibition, The Arts Society of Kingston, in the Hudson Valley, summer, 2021. Her poetry was used as part of an Off-Off Broadway production, "On the Outside Looking In."
