What the Muses Leave Behind

  I do not belong to myself.  So says a woman of my years in Mariupol, Ukraine, after she walks out of a bunker, returning to the streets and the dust and the stench and the rubble. She perspires wisdom, amid the deafening boom and rattle, so that the ghoulish din becomes a screen, a trellis for another vine of knowing to climb from the scorched Earth. Here in Tennessee, tendrils of spring tease us. Ukraine’s winter has its long claws out. Still bomb shelters fill with music, to coax Persephone to return to her mother. After all, it is the green fuse that convinces death to share its plunder and feed the parts of Earth being born, germinating, adding another supple layer. I plant potatoes in black dirt full of worms and beetles and slime mold, while the moon is still dark. I pray a pledge into each sprout, Phoenix rising from the muck to lift dreams of the careworn, up and up and out. Nearby the oak and beech watch each feathered wish drift past their canopies on wings of yell...