I wheeled a resident to the hallway window.
It was during COVID.

Their daughter stood in the dead flowerbed
because there was nowhere else to stand.

It was winter.

The flowers had long ago collapsed
over the dark, hard earth.

My resident sat bundled up,
cocooned in a white hospital blanket,

shaking from age, or fear,
or simply to stay warm.

I use my own phone.

One spoke into the receiver.
The other listened through the glass.

Words crossed the speaker,
the window kept them apart.

How are you?    I’m okay.
What’s new?     Nothing much.

The same answer,
week after week.

Their daughter talked about grandchildren,
weather, cost of groceries, life beyond

those closed doors…in this case, a window.
My resident, who had very little to report.

I stood beside them, holding my phone
mending their bridge.

When the calls end, we watch them
walk back to their car. Then drive away.

I push the wheelchair down the hall
thinking about the wrong side of the glass.

To one day

I may be on the inside, trapped
searching for something new to say.

And someone else, much younger than me
will hold a phone between us

While my grown child stands
where the flowers used to grow.

little sprite, maybe 4
waiting to board a big, white airplane
she’s the perfection of tiny moments
nut-rounded forehead
polka dot pants
messy dark curls in a lopsided bun

ma-ma
ma-ma
ma-ma!

a snack bag is offered
little one giggles
offfers a chip to big brother

ma-ma
ma-ma
ma-ma!

a drink is proffered
mother holds bright orange soda
little one sips
burps
sips
smiles

ma-ma
ma-ma
ma-ma!

tank you

I’d love to get off your case, you first
Horses run free
The fate of the lilac bush
Weaned on her tang
Loving her before she was a constellation
Random stacks of books
Up the ladder
Will the goat eat
Is the mirage worth the heat and the scorpion
The wind has been pushing me around my whole life

The edge of the storm rode
just shy of my home 

this time but I have not 
forgotten my neighbor’s 

kindness nor will I leave them 
to fend for themselves. No matter

the color of their thoughts. 
This is the time for mending drywall

not burning bridges or anything
else for that matter so let the floods 

see what we are built from.

Today I’m cruisin’ 
Only following my heart
And singing away

The manual lists the following:
38 screws,  35 mm long,
28 screws,  50 mm long,
8 screws, 15 mm long,
and 20 that are “adjustable,”
whatever that means.

If I unpack the cushions now,
they will recover from their vacuum pack,
cryogenically sealed bags
in about two hours.

I wonder what else I will unleashed
when I open those bags. 
A stowaway vermin spreading death
like fleas on the backs of rats?
Unlikely, but I feel itchy. 

“MADE IN CHINA” is stamped under “90lbs.”

On Amazon Prime Day,
the box encountered a
          “delivery incident.”

I’m quite sure that means yesterday’s delivery guy
refused to wrangle the box off the truck.

Today’s guy, in a great fanfare
of untoward language and slamming of tailgates,
deposited the seen-better-days box
on my front stoop.

Now, all the parts spread out before me,
I wonder, what in the world was I thinking?!

They mapped the brain of a lamprey, and
I don’t know why,  and I don’t know what
a lamprey is except that they survive
through extinction and exodi and the brain
looks like a person’s,  in some sense,  like a
jellyfish with those floating nerves, each
tendril a threat, an invitation to reach out 
and touch me and see if you survive the pain.