Spring Poem to a Bosnian Poet

I imagine you, your voice stopped

by the speed with which the lives around you crumble.

I imagine you wanting, trying to write,

not about the blood stains at your door,

not about the fragments of your family

huddled in basements, nor about the hate

rising in pandemic streams

but about the tree hidden in some

obscure alley, the last tree,

and not about the fact that it’s the last tree

but about buds that have opened into leaves,

about new leaves

with bits of light and wind in them.