Posts for June 1, 2020 (page 3)

The Sun Will Shine Again

Hundreds covering a street

Signs blocking the sun

Staring eyes through shields

Sore throats and aching feet

Standing face to face

Instead of

Side by side

The crowd lowers

The voices rise

Armed statues towering,

“Kneel with us!

Kneel with us!”

Tears falling and

Voices cracking,

Until the sun shined again,

The blue and black

One by one

Falling to a knee

A peaceful interaction

Between the foes

A glove to a bare hand

Crying behind a mask

And crying behind a shield

3 words spoken

To come together,

“We hear you.”

But what is the sun failed to rise
our morning baptism
absent
would we continue to try? 

or would we forget all of our progress?
loosing it to whatever darkness we have found ourselves in. 

I’d like to believe we’d keep going. 

The stars will continues to shine,
guiding us in spite of the night. 

The powerful are shocked
that they die, like the rest of us,
and coming fast,
no time to unshape their mouth.

When death comes to Mister
he’s stunned, frankly, he can no longer
stack it up in the corner and
shuffle it around in his hand.  

It has come to others,
of course,
but they were weak
and burdened with thoughts. 

Do you have a migraine,
his wife waited by the door.
He did not want to answer her
to say, it’s happening, after all.  

He did not want to quit the womb
His wish had always won out
and yet, here’s darkness
and there’s the shroud

I

There were places I meant go this year:
Shiloh, Reelfoot Lake, Shackleford Banks;  
A beach house near Hilton Head; 
The Carolina highlands, Judculla Rock,
Montana, Wyoming—
The Seychelles and Madagascar in the fall. 

I had itineraries. I had bookings. I was busy. I’m running out of time.
My reservations were not of the medical kind, 
Until the middle of March, the last week of winter,
When my agendas vanished into unknowing.
My calendar stopped, flights cancelled, plans disappeared.
No matter. I’m still here. 

II

The roads and skies went quiet.
The wound in the ozone layer healed.
The canals of Venice cleared.
The smog-curtained Himalayas reappeared.
In snowy Yellowstone, the grizzlies woke up this spring
In a wilderness clear of tourists, for the first time in their lives.

Nature gained a little against the pestilence of us. 
Her breath less ragged in brief repose.
“It may not last,” warned the ancient trees,
“This contagious species could adapt and return,
Infectious, legion, clever—but easily provoked to mutual slaughter. 
That flaw in them may offer hope for you.”

III

Hiding from the invisible killer, three months in, 
You and I have begun to look suspicious. 
Our hair has reached the dreaded earflap stage.
At first, we looked like mild caricatures,
Then aged versions of our wild young selves,
And now, more like the assassin in No Country For Old Men.

But we’re not tossing the quarter here.
This virus could be anywhere, lingering in the air,
Riding on a post box flap, coming for us
On the smooth green pepper from the store. 
Hand sanitizer does for holy water anymore.
I anoint myself with it as I flee the brash unmasked. 

IV

My house is quiet, miles from any town.
I write my first poem in years while eating cherries. 
A charm of goldfinches gilds my garden every day.
Today, I Zoomed a yoga class, 
Walked the dogs through green fields, cooked a risotto.
Even in the pandemic, not much has changed for me.

Outside my fence, the wide world is on fire.
It is always Armageddon somewhere.
The end of one world or another
Is always coming, and something new spinning into place.
I wonder: what will the new order be this time, and who will make it?
I am lucky to have come this far. 

I straighten my back, make my bed, sketch a goldfinch, pull weeds,
Light candles, repair small things, and wait for time to end and begin anew.
It’s what I can do.  

I feel it,
change.
It’s almost
here.
It is often
suffocating,
how terrifying 
change
can be.
To others,
change is 
freeing,
a breath of
fresh air.
To me,
it’s often
an
inevitable nightmare,
uncertain
and
unplanned.
So uncertain,
that
even my
intuition
isn’t
fast enough.
I’ve felt you,
change,
you’ve been 
here
the whole
time.

How dare you hide.

Thousands die in hospital beds
(and you run away)
Peace is met with tear gas
(and you keep your mouth shut)
The world is grieving and crying out
(and your condolences are nowhere to be found)

Where are you now?
Why are you silent?

Humanity weeps, the Earth aches.
You turn away.

So many do not have the option to hide away.
To flee to beaches,
to destinations,
to the illusion of peace.

How many more people have to die
for you to even entertain the idea
that something may be wrong?

The sapling stands beside the rain-swelled lake, both reflecting on the good fortune of existence. An uncut stone, left by masons or ice, accepts where it lies as fair exchange for being’s simple pleasure. Between the three, the dissatisfied columns march silently past the stones of their dead. All that remain of this faithful army, perhaps they are called by misted heights to distract from their fallen state. This is how it always works. The new masters arrive in the night’s dreams and expectations, order their monuments, fail to withstand time. Only the distance from then to now varies. That, and how steep the price exacted from the servants.         

Fresh, sweet peas, strung by deft fingers,
cooked with a chunk of bacon fat, and
small potatoes
so tender, you eat them skin and all

Just-baked cornbread, steam rising,
soft in the middle
with a crunchy edge, the memory of
Pa’s yellow cornbread, so many years gone

Peaches and cream corn – doesn’t taste like peaches,
but that’s probably a good thing;
it’s definitely a good thing,
Buttered and sucked off the cob

Sunday dinner,
Poetry in my mouth

moments are rare

currently it’s hours or else days

I miss moments

tiny increments of time which mattered

larger segments might help to pass the time

but the tiny abbreviations help me get through

minuscule diversions

a few words exchanged or a glance shared

all the time in the world

is a fallacy

Zoom into the warring
America. Zoom past
the riots, the COVID
hospital wards,
courthouses burning,
the so-so-so-white
White House, the mothers
weeping in tear gas
clouds, the coffins
stacking up. Zoom into
the patch of Appalachian
green, past the strip
mining and rebel flags
flapping, past everyone
not wearing masks, everyone
“all lives matter”ing.
Zoom in until
you see this gray-roofed
house, just upstream
from the family
graveyard. Zoom in past
the WiFi field that dams up
the world’s acid, past
everyone needing so much
and find a tired
woman in a wooden rocker,
breath slow and even.
See the bird nest
in the porch rafters.
Zoom in to see
the tiny momma
bird head peeping out,
eyeing the woman who
is eyeing it
with such intensity.
They crouch there,
the two of them,
mothers hunkered down
and hidden from everything
for a moment,
on high alert,
trying to understand
each other.