A young girl in a red scarf sits in a meadow
of wild flowers in the Carpathian Mountains
picking and arranging them into a bouquet.
What could be more peaceful
A few hundred miles away her neighbors
in Ukraine are being bombed by Russian missiles.
Images appear on the nightly news of the massacres
mangled bloodied bodies of women and children
while we watch from our safe places and
go about our innocent and peaceful lives.
“What to make of a diminished thing”
What do we do when war makes
everything a diminished thing.