In Wartime
Everything is heartbreaking now. Bodies
are heartbreaking, and more and more are broken.
Men are heartbreaking, but women and children
are more heartbreaking.
Rain is heartbreaking, and flowers grow more
heartbreaking every day, especially wisteria
and wild irises, and cherry blossoms,
which have always been heartbreaking.
The ocean grows warm and poisoned.
The birds slowly disappear.
The air fills with the smoke of burning
trees and burning buildings.
Beauty is more heartbreaking now,
mixed as it is with so much dying:
iridescent crimson feathers on the throats
of hummingbirds, blood on the sidewalks of
ruined cities. For being is wondrous
beyond all understanding.
For we are one heart, and our heart
is breaking.
—Carolyn Miller
Carolyn Miller is a poet and freelance writer living in San Francisco. Her most recent book of poetry is Route 66 and Its Sorrows (Terrapin Books, 2017). Two earlier books, Light, Moving (2009) and After Cocteau (2002), were published by Sixteen Rivers Press. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, and Prairie Schooner, among many other journals, and her awards include the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry from Shenandoah and the Rainmaker Award from Zone 3.
Cover artwork: Eleni Aidonidov “That’s the Matter 2”
