Published poems by Veronica Ashenhurst, who has Severe ME

The amber in Rivne is up to 50 million years old. And pieces of worked amber were recovered from Paleolithc and neolithic sites in the Dnipro area. It seems that at one site, Mezhyric, they found 4 mammoth bone huts from Cro-magnan Homo sapiens and they found over 300 pieces of amber attributed to the western Rivne region. This means that the amber travelled far from the Western areas to the more central ones.Also, in other places a small statuette was found carved of amber, as well as many other items.
 
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As we approach the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine, I’d like to share three poems I published last year about the war, not yet posted to S4ME.



The poems grapple with difficult themes: lament; loss; grief. But the work also seeks to highlight the brave defiance of Ukraine, the country of my ancestors. I wrote the poems in the safety of home, far from a war zone. Yet I believe the severe ME experience—and its attendant pain and loss—can spark empathy for people suffering under the violence of war. Ukraine’s people want to live in freedom. So, too, in their own way, do patients with ME.



I’m including one sonnet in its entirety here, and will link to all three poems below. As always, thanks to Simon McGrath for careful editing of my work.



The Kharkiv Cellist

You sit down and hold grief between your knees.

She leans against you, immense in carved wood,

Her front the colour of a chestnut mare.

You touch her four taut strings and sculpted sides,

The bow is a bent light beam in your hand.

Behind you stands the brick school, quiet, burnt —

Number one hundred thirty-four, with blown

Windows like open mouths. Your city, where

Shells drop, rats dart through rubble, tigers starve,

And a girl loses her eye to rockets.

You play, and know what I still strive to learn:

Grief, that stark beauty, is a fraught chasm.

You hold her edges, hush your knocking heart,

And coax her music, in a minor key.


Read all three poems at Academy of the Heart and Mind: https://academyoftheheartandmind.com/2022/07/22/borderland-and-other-poems/
 
April is National Poetry Month in Canada, a good time to share a sonnet I published not long ago. When writing, I’m often drawn to the theme of envy as part of chronic illness, and its subjective, contingent nature: envy can make me lose sight of the ways in which I am fortunate. The poem also explores how people are denied the right of protest speech. The right to protest can be of great value, not only in taking a stand against war crimes, but also to advocate for better treatment for all who are disenfranchised—whether by war or disability. I hope you enjoy the poem and thank you for your kind words of support.


Dusk in Montreal, Four A.M. in Moscow


The bone-sore truth was that I envied them:

Two young friends sailing on their will, strong legs

Upright, unlike mine. Dawn’s lace above them,

Rose facades in back. The friends linked hands, posing

Wordless before the lens, their fanning white

Dresses stained blood red. Quick, thirty seconds

To protest a vain conquest—snap, snap, snap—

Before police bear down with rods. No one there

Dares call the war a war—nor talk of shells

And shallow graves. The chief brooks no dissent,

Yet the women in the photo surge like ships.

Later, I grasp that they might envy me—

My legs won’t take me to view twilight’s close,

But still I type. No vengeful state surveils me.


The poem was published by The Christian Century. The link is here: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/dusk-montreal-four-m-moscow
 
This is wonderful work. I haven’t seen some of these poems for a while, and some of the lines are startling:

Veronica said:
The Kharkiv Cellist

You sit down and hold grief between your knees.
Click to expand...


Veronica said:
Dusk in Montreal, Four A.M. in Moscow

The bone-sore truth was that I envied them:

Two young friends sailing on their will, strong legs
Click to expand...

thank you, Veronica
 
Hello S4ME poetry readers. Today I am sharing another poem with a Ukraine theme. This is a sestina, a poem of sixes. A sestina comprises six sixains followed by a three-line summation, and the poem uses six different end-words reused in a set pattern. This poetic form takes on a spiral shape, which I found helpful in exploring the historical repetition of Soviet (and now Russian) imperialism in Ukraine. The poem is dedicated to my maternal grandfather. I hope you enjoy it.

Sestina for the Black Earth

In memory of S.P., my grandfather

You, fatherless, wished revolution’s wounds
might finally mend. At thirteen, held fit to farm,
you knew chilblains, threadbare boots. But not theft.
Mam sold a calf in Stavyshche, and led home,
to work the land, the frayed young pony
whose coat you brushed to gloss in the village.

You yoked him to a sleigh, sped from the village
for sugar beet pulp, forgetting your wounds.
Then, sour rumor landed near the pony.
Men with guns brought state decrees for the farms.
The village elder called all from their homes
to gather. An armed partisan roused by theft

stood on a rundown wagon, obliging theft:
yield your tools and oxen, he told the village;
hoes, plows, carts to the collective. Stripped homes.
The people stood stunned and hushed, then wounded,
they let forth cries. The man said this new farming’s
certain utopia. Your bucking pony

whinnied, and men seized him, sliced the pony’s
tail, tossing it at Mam—exulting in theft.
To build vast barns, men stole poplars from your farm.
You, fifteen, bore this ruin of your village.
A century on, revolution’s wounds
aren’t healed yet. You’re not there, but your home’s

a plunder anew. Empire’s soldiers ship home
metric tons of pilfered shoes and tires. Ponies
gallop from wheat fields set aflame, while wounds
from mines kill men among the barley. This theft
palms Scythian gold; hauls girls from villages.
Rockets lie wrecked near sacks of grain on farms.

Still the conquest rolls, looting cherry farms,
blowing roofs from silos and smallholders’ homes.
For you, I count the splintered villages
in the old country, struck like your pony.
Farmers save what wheat they can, amidst the theft,
but I can find no balm to close these wounds.

You memorialized home, a lithe pony.
Now village partridges take flight over the theft:
sundown gilds their wings, high above torn farms and wounds.



The poem was published by The Christian Century. The link is here: https://www.christiancentury.org/poetry/poetry/sestina-black-earth
 
Hello S4ME poetry readers. Today I'm sharing two poems that draw on the ME/CFS experience. The first is a sonnet, below, that explores themes of loss and longing. As some of you know, I had to stop working as a lawyer due to the severity of my illness, and since I fell ill quite young, I didn't have a chance to become established in my legal career. I allude to this theme of aborted dreams and plans in the poem. Do let me know if the poem resonates with you.


Second Spring


Come for tea, though I’m plaintive. You’ll wear scented

May blooms. I’ll tell you about my first spring.

I had unfurled plans, then, angled to the sun:

codes of law I’d learn; a dais at which I’d stand;

a nameplate; an office. But the court robes are

scarcely worn, my poise stands moth-eaten now.

Illness settled like a loft of pigeons

on my limbs. The world greyed to this room, this

exhale, these dejected hips now turning

by degrees. Sit by me, in your lilac of renewal:

I’ll pull your four-petaled buds that taste of

green rain. You won’t see summer, you’ll fall in weeks,

but you re-emerge yearly, while I thirst,

decades on, to grow jewelled leaves—to flower again.



The poem appears in Corporeal Literary Magazine, here: www.corporeallitmag.com/veronicaashenhurst
 
The second poem, below, is a sestina which seeks to shed light on the experience of those who care for ME/CFS patients. I've been very lucky to have my mother's unfailing support over the decades of my illness, and I dedicate the sestina to her. But the poem also aims to speak more broadly to any experience of caregiving, and the challenges therein. If the poems I've written speak to you, I hope you'll share them with friends, to raise awareness of the many facets of the ME/CFS experience.


Sestina for My Mother



You lugged hope to teashops: your keen-eyed girl,

the child you believed could conquer blue worlds

with her wit. You showed her Klimt and tested

her recall for French while she sat, a friend

in small-scale, helping you forget a distressed

flight, by sea, from the old country. You confessed


the burden of swift uprooting, confessed

to narrow rooms, pickling jars for cups. The girl

listened through silk braids, sensing distress.

By after-school light, books became the girl’s world,

as books had been your world, well-thumbed print friends

on the shelf, refuge when fate sent its tests.


The girl fell ill from infection, testing

the will you had left. Damp, scared, she confessed

her strength had turned like a changeable friend.

So, you took her to doctors, who told the girl

they had run various tests, and your world

halted. The girl might have mental distress,


claimed the doctors, might be tired, distressed,

wanting reprieve from her studies, and the test

results—negative—only showed her world-weary.

This was no contrived pang, the girl confessed.

You believed her, sunk in her wheelchair, your girl

whose verve had once lit teashops. You’d be a friend,


then, as stalwart as red cedar. A friend,

a mother with roots. Still, your daughter’s distress

grew when doctors said they had nothing for girls

with an illness few cared to thoroughly test.

It was simpler to shrug behind desks, they confessed,

to leave girls forgotten in beds, for the world


spun on. The girl became a woman. Her world

held blank hours, sore limbs, seclusion. Old friends

fell away; your grief felt hard to confess,

while doctors, half-hearted, reviewed the distress.

In the girl’s blood and cells, they ran new tests:

her body was ill after all. The girl


had nearly forsaken the world. Your distress

hid in your friendly heart. But these cumbrous tests

had rendered you mother—thus you confessed to the girl.



This poem was also published by Corporeal Literary Magazine, here: www.corporeallitmag.com/veronicaashenhurst
 
Thank you, Veronica, for all the effort you put into crafting these fabulous poems.

The Sestina to your mother issuch a beautiful exploration of the impact of illness on a carer as well as a patient and, even more, of your relationship with your mother, that evolved from it that it made me want to cry. Which doesn’t happen very often.
 
Hi S4ME poetry readers. I'm sharing my most recently published poem. As always, I try to describe the ME/CFS experience as faithfully as possible.


Wishing in July


—for S.M., in friendship

Our days were a host of common house sparrows
perched on a fence – preoccupied with millet
seeds or dust baths, waiting for squares of sun.
Our letters were patchy flights in which we
told of weak limbs, wheelchairs, folded selves, and
the flat concrete of loss – but also, of myths,
and the waterlily that bloomed like a full
salmon moon on your emerald pond. As you
celebrate another milestone, I wish
for you one cardinal day, with kingly
feathers and a crowned swagger, with climbing
crimson wings and a whistle to pierce the woe.
The sparrow days now scatter for a poplar;
wounds sleep; and the cardinal alights, carolling.



The poem appears in the December 2023 issue of Star 82 Review. You can find it here:
https://www.star82review.com/11.4/ashenhurst-wishing.html
 
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