Health wise
I’m back where I started from
at the beginning of the month,
my poetic output waylaid
by a vicious virus.

Today is my first day out
and naturally I go to Felicitous
Bookstore & Cafe where the waitress
is truly felicitous to this old man.
It’s a magical time of no customers
and she sits close to me to read
from her current book: Thoreau’s Walden

I’m all in, her voice
is soft with an almost imperceptible lisp
with which she holds the words
for just a little more:
Our whole life is startlinly moral.
There is never an instant’s truce
between virtue and vice.

She fills me with a deep sense of loss.
I miss all my old lovers, men and women.
I miss my days in the Navy with Dr. Tom.
I miss my life at the houseboat
on Harrington Lake.
I miss my great grandaughter Penelope
and her brand new baby I have not seen.

But here I am with this young woman
and it is enough.