Molt: Uprising

Molt: Uprising 
Warsaw Ghetto, Winter 2005

One type of Social Realist archtecture

Cigarette burns in a white face,

ravens scavenge in the snow.

Some perch in a bare birch

waiting for the storm to end,

for the dim emptiness of winter dusk

falling over socialist realist architecture,

snow falling through the courtyard,

white flakes resting on black wings.

Naked, cauled by a bitter wind I stand

on the terrace as long as I can stand,
watch for the birch trees and the ravens

to shed the snow. Some the ravens molt,

most melts into black. Off the rooftop

a white seagull shoots up the gray sky.

What are sixty years of snow to a ghost?
                                          J. O'Brien