I am back in Kyiv as I write this—not in the flesh, but virtually. For the 203rd night, I am paying $42 a day to stay at The House of Swans, an Airbnb apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine, that I have never actually seen. The money goes to my host, Leona, a nurse and poet, who uses it to buy food and supplies for her family, as well as orphaned children and homeless widows.
And still the bombs fall. In the month of July, while we celebrated Independence Day, went to the beach, ate BBQ chicken and corn on the cob, 126 ballistic missiles rained down on Ukraine. In Lyiv, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the most beautiful cobblestoned cities in all of Europe, a family of five was killed, three of them children, with two more pulled from the rubble. President Zelenskyy said, “It was an ordinary home…”
Leona has been my virtual friend and host since the first days of the war, when I was looking for a way to get money directly to a Ukrainian family. On this 1,627th day since Russia invaded Ukraine, Leona is weary. Her brother is fighting on the front. Her mother has been sick. Her son could be called up at any time.
And she has lost so very many friends.
So I book nights, send money and compose these stories to bring Leona and Ukraine to life. She reads them and writes, “Your words and your support mean so much, especially during these difficult times. Thank you for standing with us.”
Leona and I have shared poetry, favorite songs, sorrows and joys. In one letter, she told me about Larry Levis, the San Joaquin poet of orchards, ghosts, fathers and horses. She said, “His poems made a very deep and quiet impression on me. There is a special attentiveness in them to memory, loss and to what a person carries into adult life.”
Leona says she can’t find his books for sale in Ukraine. I immediately wrote back that I would send them to her.
That was four months ago when I carefully filled out the customs forms and placed the heavy box on the scales to be weighed. I paid $214 for postage, tracking and insurance and asked the clerk if Leona’s books would make it to Kyiv. He looked at the computer screen and repeated what he had already told me, “Yes, there is service to Ukraine.”
Every week or so, I punched the tracking numbers into my phone and got the same response. It had departed Santa Barbara, left the states, flown across the seas to a land where missiles fall from the sky onto “ordinary homes.”
Then silence.
Spring came. Spring ended. Summer came. The “very deep and quiet” poems of the San Joaquin poet were lost to Leona.
This morning I went to the post office—a simple trip to buy stamps and send a package to my mother in Tucson. As I was leaving, the clerk called, “Wait, you have something in the back. Something big and heavy and it’s been here a while.” He disappeared to the mysterious “back” and returned with a battered box, smashed at the corners, barely held together by layers of packing tape.
My heart sank. It was Leona’s poetry books. What were they doing back at my post office?
From the priority mail slip and the customs declaration form, I learned that the box of poetry, scarves, magazines, coloring books, seeds, feathers, a children’s book I wrote, and a small pencil drawing my husband, Richard, did of me when I was eighteen, had made it all the way to Leona’s neighborhood, to her post office on Derevlianska Street. It had crossed an ocean, entered a war zone and come within reach of her life.
All that was left was for Leona to claim her box. There were clear instructions on the packing slip to call Leona upon the box’s arrival. But in a war zone, nothing is clear. Sirens wail, transformers blow, and tracking screens go blank. Larry Levis’ poems, which had made such a deep and quiet impression on my dear friend, sat for weeks, lost in a back room in the dark, gathering the fine gray dust of destruction.
All unbeknownst to Leona, who was told there was nothing for her.
And then one day, a Nova Poshta clerk at Branch 224 stamped the box as unclaimed, bound its broken seams and sent it back to the US—where it was resealed with official USPS tape and pushed through the system until it found its way back to Santa Barbara. Where it sat for weeks in my peaceful San Roque post office.
I thanked the clerk, lifted the dead weight from the counter, and carried the box home, like a wounded child.
I lifted each item from the ruined cardboard, laid the contents on the coffee table and marvelled at their journey – like beleaguered friends who show up unannounced just looking for the warmth of a shoulder. I picked up Larry Levis’ heavy tome, Swirl and Vortex, and opened to a random page. There’s a name for this—bibliomancy, the ancient practice of divination where you seek guidance by interpreting a randomly chosen page from a book. I read the last lines of one of Levis’ poems, “She leans against me as we go up the steps. This step. Then the next.”
Then I carefully placed Larry Levis’ poetry, magazines, coloring books, feathers and seeds into a new, much stronger box. I wrote all over, in black marker, Leona’s phone number with clear instructions to call the recipient upon arrival.
Then I sent it all back to Leona.
And still the bombs fall.
If you want to donate to Ukraine:
Chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen serves hot meals to frontline communities and evacuation hubs. Their motto is : “Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people may eat, we will be there—we must be there.” WCK has served more than 300 million meals since the war started. donate.wck.org/campaign/749437/donate
