Category: covid
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Pandemic Meditation on the Second Anniversary of My Mother’s Passing
1) This morning On the second anniversary Of my mother’s passing I listened to birds in trees While contemplating how hard It must be to not be allowed to sit With love ones who are dying Breathing out this damned virus In vapors of last breaths 2) I remember how my sister texted That mom…
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untitled covid poem
When mortality numbers decline we won’t return to how things were to all our old routines to old haunts and habits There is no time machine to go backwards we have been remade for a future we do not know where past lives have no meaning The universe pulls us towards unity don’t throw away…
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Wobbling
Social distancing on our porch with the latest New Yorker and a stack of poetry books the table I write on wobbles I place cardboard under a leg and still it wobbles I open Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems turn to a random page marvel at how he uses words in unique ways I put down…
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Junk thinking
Today, the city will come by for curbside yard waste I think I’ll bundle up pandemic fears and set them out there, too Don’t believe those Bible thumping divine retribution doomsayers An asteroid took out the dinosaurs NOT gay rights, abortion prayer in school, immigration the plague or a coronavirus This isn’t the world’s first…
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Daily news
at the street by your mailbox you lean your rake against the broken wall watch white blossoms melt from trees and listen to daylight talk about mortality 4-1-20
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Ornery cuss
He worked hard, drank beer fought a lot when he was young; loved his wife, loved his kids; never saw a dog he didn’t like. He drove a pale blue Chevy pickup windows down, his name neatly stenciled under his elbow on the driver’s door; it said, Albert W. Graul, Jr. Mascoutah, Illinois He liked…
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a monk on fire (for John Prine)
because I heard he may be dying I listened to hours of John Prine before I went to bed My wife peeked her head in my office told me an owl was hooting in a tree I never understood a hooting owl why they warned the night they would be up and hunting my Uncle…
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Crystal halos
(for an old college friend, Terry – stay well, my friend; I will see you on the safe side of summer) ‘Crystal Halos’ This morning, a bird woke me with insistent calls of “Pick me, pick me,” outside my window I sat barefoot on the porch watched light shimmy down from tree tops to run…
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Friday night on house arrest
To avoid dangers that go bump in the night, my clumsy friend, Kristine, suggested we put ourselves on house arrest. I decided to begin digesting books instead of devouring them whole. I resolved to read four poets at a time digesting a poem from one book before I moved to the next book back and…
My husband's poetry 