Where Old Fliers Come to Roost
Poem of the Month
Ancient Eagle Press
A Distant War
Waiting in the night
Listening to the barred owl,
Spring peepers, wind in the cherry tree,
All is peace. My time is short.
But in the east, distant thunder
Wheat fields fallow
Generations broken
Sunflowers washed in tears
One man’s war, one nation’s suffering
Launched by fiction and obsession
Taking the castle or killing the neighbor’s cow,
A Pyrrhic victory is still a victory.
How great the distance? How safe my peace?
Does that same thunder rumble around me,
Truth sacrificed to ambition,
One man’s obsession, one nation’s peril?
Who will rise above their station?
Father/Mother of the nation
Lead us to a clearer light
Where Blue and Red and Black unite.
LA /2022
Each month Ancient Eagle Press offers a poem appropriate to the season or the mood of our editorial staff. Poems may be new or drawn from existing AEP editions.
Archives
March 2022 -- Dreams
February 2022 -- Sundae Worship
January 2022 -- Pandemic Polemic
December 2021 -- Shadows
November 2021 -- The Conceit of Immortality
Nov 2019-Oct 2021 -- On Break
October 2019 -- Deck of Lies
September 2019 - In the Surgery
August 2019 - The Cousins
July 2019 -- Chilly
June 2019 -- The Queen of Malvern
April-May 2019 -- India/Bhutan
March 2019 -- Swatting Gnats
February 2019 -- To My Valentines, Past and Future
January 2019 -- I'll Never Say Goodbye
December 2018 -- Grandpa
November 2018 -- Meditation
October 2018 -- Benediction
September 2018 -- Passages
August 2018 -- Feeding the Beast
July 2018 - One Can Have Knowledge...
June 2018 -- The Unsinkable Molly Drown
May 2018 -- Advice to my Grandson
April 2018 -- Awaiting Idunn
March 2018 -- Flight
February 2018 -- Lakesong
January 2018 -- Schrödinger's Cat
December 2017 -- Daybreak
October 2017 -- Night Watch
September 2017 -- The Princess
August 2017 - Pelham
July 2017 -- Siena
June 2017 -- Loyal, Straight, and True
May 2017 -- A Thousand Flowers
April 2017 -- Oboe Rap
March 2017 - March Madness
February 2017 -- The Cost of Doing Business
January 2017 -- Reflection at a Winter Window
December 2016 -- The Creation
November 2016 -- Hemolymph Moon
October 2016 -- Vortex
September 2016 -- Do You?
August 2016 -- Sailing
July 2016 -- Mulberries
June 2016 -- Off Tucker Point
May 2016 -- Unforgettable
April 2016 -- At Night She Cries
April 2022
If you're looking for an upbeat POM celebrating the arrival of Spring, thumb through the archives. Try March of 2017. One of my favorites. Meanwhile, March 2022 came in like a lamb and is dutifully heading out like a lion, but the rest of the month was focused on the bear. The attempted annexation and current systematic destruction of Ukraine is consistent with Russian behavior in Chechnya, Syria, Georgia, and previous annexation of Crimea with de facto partitioning of Eastern Ukraine. There are no good guys in this story. For the past thirty years East and West have made promises that they have failed to keep…promises to each other and promises to Ukraine. Ukraine has sometimes created its own problems, with unstable government, systemic corruption, and policies that disadvantage ethnic Russian Ukrainians. But while there are no good guys from a historical perspective, today there is a pretty clear bad guy in Moscow and a surprising hero in Kiev. Ukraine’s relatively small military has effectively stopped the Russian advance, in no small measure due to inspirational leadership. Round 1 seems to have been a draw, but quantity has a quality of its own, and Russia has plenty of quantity, as well as proximity and time. This has been called the First TikTok War, but that ticking could be the sound of a time bomb. With that cheery thought, here’s tonight’s creation, April’s Poem of the Month,