Praise and a Prayer for Eva Tur, Ukrainian
Soldier
You, mother, artist, soldier, say you've
joined the war now
as a 'sexless being,' this war that took
your husband
You gave up your sex – but not your art,
as I see from
your photo, pink flowers stuck all over
your body armor
You, adorned with hope and beauty across
full battle dress,
adorned with what in war isn't, but in you
is
Seeing your photo, I look up 'women
fighting in Ukraine,'
and find you one of many, out in the mud
and wreck
Working from basements of broken
battlefront cities,
patting your bodies for wounds as
explosions make the dead
I see a female sniper clean the barrel of
her .50 cal long rifle
in a concrete block room while a black and
white cat grooms
This scarred and destroyed
post-apocalyptic landscape where
you dreamed up your prewar art on balmy
summer evenings,
Daytime blue-sky swallows giving the sky
to nighttime bats
Now mechanical drones of war fly ceaseless
death over it
Tanks, artillery, and gunfire sending
their sudden thievery
to find an exploding mark, replacing the
living with the dead
I have a crush on you from across an ocean
and Europe,
the radiation of your war feeling closer
like hands to fire
On you, a sex no longer opposite, I have
this crush – on you
and your art, a radiation of beauty the
opposite of war's
Stay safe today, tonight – your spirit of
freedom must, will,
bend history the right way – I believe you
will not lose
Steve Croft
Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. His latest chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, December 2023). His poems have appeared in Big Windows Review, Eunoia Review, Ariel Chart, 3rd Wednesday, and other places and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.