Take your cue from the bluebirds, who have no faith in the future but who build the future nevertheless, leaf by leaf and straw by straw.
-- Margaret Renkl, “What to Do with Spring’s Wild Joy in a Burning World”
There are metal barriers
called ‘hedgehogs’ being built
to stop tanks in war-torn Ukraine.
Artists are soldering steel to protect
bodies instead of making art for inspiration.
We must make things —
most of all, mistakes.
Also, friends and enemies, love and
war, cups of tea and pots of soup.
Forging, shaping, building, creating.
I used to have an artist boyfriend
whose father’s company made springs.
The question was: what is worthy
of making? Poems, paintings, bridges,
machines, babies, jokes, money.
My family includes farmers,
postal workers, and pottery-makers.
Growing food, sorting mail, shaping
and making things that can be held,
objects to make daily life happen.
Like the bluebird, I gather straw
despite despair, write odes to joy
in a burning world that wonders:
what is the worth of birdsong
unless we can eat their wings?
As first published in MockingHeart Review, Volume 7, Issue 2