There were linden trees in Kyiv
like the linden tree beside my driveway
where honey bees brizzz through June,
ignoring every other bloom for that luscious drip.
Once, in Padua, the lindens almost broke me
their fragrance dense and sweet as heartbreak
through the open doors—my last lover a thousand
miles away and Padua’s heat daring me to breathe.
Are there still linden trees in Kyiv?
Unable to flee, have they pushed deeper—-searching
out their siblings’ tendrilled roots in the soil of parks and graveyards?
Does their perfume re-saturate the air each time the smoke clears?
Basket bark, wood lathed into cabinets, creamy blossoms dried and steeped
to break the fever—they give and give. I read that lindens sometimes live a thousand years,
their broad limbs sprawled across the sky, their only predator the war-
makers who bomb every living thing. As if that means they win.
Miriam O’Neal’s newest collection is The Half-Said Things (Nixes Mate, 2022). She is Poet Laureate of Plymouth, MA. She has published in The Waxed Lemon, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere. New work will appear in Lily Poetry Review soon. She hosts the longest running reading series south of Boston.