PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

On cold days

His body grew tense

For his mind was back in the gulag

He ached liked he'd been beaten

And had swung a hammer all day

He remembered pissing on his hands

In order to feel them

To warm them

Feeling the stinging of urine

On the cuts and calluses

Sometimes feeling ice crystals form

He recalled how all day he thought

Of two stale, dry, and often green pieces of bread

And a ladle of balanda

Hopefully with an once of flesh stuck to the bones

His mouth stinging from the salt

And parched with painful thirst

He could still see his cell

Could smell the unemptied bucket

See his breath in the gray darkness

Could feel the floor

Where he laid his pounding head

And dreamed of blankets

There was a crack in the windowless wall

Through which he saw a solitary daffodil

That had bloomed too early

But managed to live through the frost and snow

Inspired, he resolved to outlive the "Man of Steel"

Who sent him there

His young body grew older and weaker

But his spirit was stone

The others told him that if you survived the first year

You would live to be free

He'd even eat the roaches that crawled across the floor

For he knew he had to be strong

And when he saw the outside world

He learned that his dream had come true

He laughed a laugh of victory

When he heard Stalin was dead

Every year he saves the first daffodil

And he smiles like he is seventeen again