Ukraine, Second Week

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He has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city. Psalm 31.21

How do you feel the love of God in a city
of crumbled shops, apartments, cafés -- awake
as days and nights the enemy fires blindly,
sirens moan, and your foundations shake?

Is God in sharing cups of melted snow,
in lifting sandbags for a barricade,
in giving aid to families you don't know,
and letting go of every plan you made?

Young pilots of planes that Stinger missiles wrecked,
enemy conscripts burned alive in tanks,
the jailing of neighbors whose loyalty you suspect:
for wonders such as these, do you give thanks?

Secure, like you last month, I pray you'll see
some way to beat, yet not be like, your enemy.

I include a collage of stages in the production of a watercolor by Susan Rouse from 2020. Her discipline of making at least one work per week is the inspiration for this blog.
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The Psalmist's phrase about "God's love in a besieged city" seemed an intriguing subject to explore months before Putin's invasion put us all under siege, vicariously. On Orthodox Easter, weeks after I posted this poem, President Zolensky pleaded with his people to fight without hate. If I was naive to express such a hope, I'm in good company.

I wrote couplets from successive days' news reports, using iambic pentameter to give the lines gravitas. Without intending to produce a sonnet, I had one, only the rhyme scheme was off: AA BB CC DD EE FF GG. Reordering the lines to fit Shakespeare's ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, I experienced firsthand how his pattern gives each quatrain its own character and makes the last two lines a kind of benediction. - WSS