He’d talk to me of roots.

It was only the roots
whenever he called,
the kind once sunk
in blood-soaked earth
somewhere between
Khotyn and Lviv.

I met him just once.

He looked cold,
his coat long and lean
like a Leningrad winter,
his beard a wide wheat
field his father could see
from his orphanage window.

We met at a market.

I don’t know how
he knew me, but there
he stood, shopping bag
in hand, rambling on
of cousins, aunts and fathers
– ruins in a lost river.

The Facebook posts came later.

News of the “beat down”
by “young cowards.”
One woman just couldn’t
grasp the gratuity: “He goes
to the library every day,
doesn’t mess with anybody.”