for the people of Ukraine

How often do we forget—
watching the nightly sky show,
clouds purpling, the last of
the day’s energetic yellow
and orange rimming the horizon—
that the sun will return again?

We find ourselves sinking, too,
anticipating the coming dark.
Perhaps the angry evening sky
thunders like artillery overhead,
grays and blacks bumping like
colliding armies, an abrupt shift
from yesterday’s painterly wisps
of white scudding across blue,
an egg yolk horizon brightening
day’s end.

We cannot foretell what each
sunrise will deliver based on
the sky that closed the previous
day. Sometimes we must hunker
down and wait for the all clear.

In those moments, then, we close
our eyes and envision our favorite
sunsets, the ones that warm us,
the sunrises that feed us with
four million tons of light each
second. In every moment, even
the worst ones, we carry solar
radiance inside us—reflected
by unseen ones wishing us well—
as we call on that hope to see us
through.

(Listen to Jan read the poem here: https://anchor.fm/janis-haag/episodes/End-of-day-e1esk7f )