THANK YOU NOTE TO UKRAINE

A THANK YOU NOTE *

 

Between narrative and closure

Between the death of night and the beginning of day

 

Between the Steppe and the Prairie

 

The grandfather and the boy

 

Why are those crosses there, Grandfather?

 

Between the old story and the new story

 

I come from the country place to the city street—

 

Rural, a country boy.

We didn’t have shirts like the one I’m wearing—

Rich red thread, hand-embroidered,

High-neck, tie strings with tassels,

 

This deep rich Ukrainian top soil gift

for the body on the street—

 

My clothes came from catalogs in Chicago.

 

We had to leave when I was ten.

Seattle. A city. Like Kiev.

I wore those catalog clothes

Into the new school.

City kids had never seen anything like them—

            Or me, either.

My dad ran the grain elevator.

I knew the slippery shimmer of flax,

And how to chew wheat into gum.

I walked railroad tracks

And searched out Indian graves,

Smoking tobacco-weed rolled in newspaper

Looking for smoke signals in Midwestern skies.

 

I am rural like Egorushka in Chekhov’s story.

I am a grandfather on the street carrying a sign

With other grandparents carrying signs and we all look

More or less alike, like we are all remembering

Someone like Egorushka, the boy.

 

We are all grandfathers asking the same question

About the crosses. The same question.

 

 

Egorushka’s the one riding on the hay truck.

They’re taking him to Kiev, to school.

There he will live with relatives and study.

I know hay trucks and threshing crews.

I know accordion music.

I know war and something of peace.  

This is the story that gives me access to others.

This is the sign on my face I carry into traffic

Wearing this beautiful shirt with red thread and tassels,

A gift from Ukraine

 

Jim Bodeen

3 October—12 October 2026

 

·         The embroidered shirt is called Vyshyvanka. This poem is for O.S. &  K.S.