Fighter

Fighter     

      

Out of the general rout,

300 miles from home,

he’s made a corner spot

into a private room,

with flannel sheets for walls,

a crate for furniture,

his pallet cleanly rolled,

and neatly swept the floor–   

God knows how he survived   

or managed to catch the train:

he’s wheelchair-bound for life,

a para below T10  (**).    

With nothing besides his chair,       

alone with no supplies,

he can’t keep living here;

he’s lucky to be alive.     

I want to pass him through

to clinics in Germany–

but no, he wants to go

back the other way.

If I can help him leave

with sanitary gear–    

enough to get to Kyiv–

he has relations there,

I may not understand–    

it’s hard to find the words– 

though hurt, he’s still a man:       

he’ll find a way to serve.

Frederic Foote MD is poet and physician who lives near Washington DC. My poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Commonweal, The Progressive, and The South Carolina Review. My 2014 book of war poetry, Medic Against Bomb, won the Grayson Poetry Prize and other honors (www.medicagainstbomb.com).

He writes frequently about the war in Ukraine.

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