![flag[1]](https://sputterpub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/flag1.jpg?w=295&h=182)
It’s not too late to tackle this disease,
that triggers inflammation causing more
compounding symptoms, circumventing sure
analysis, prodigious in degrees
of insult – manifest debilities –
while experts scavenge blindly for a cure.
It’s not too late.
As soon as each (e pluribus) agrees
to (unum) act together and mature,
to don a mask as courtesy, endure
some time alone, we’ll save communities.
It’s not too late.
![220px-Cerebral_lobes[1]](https://sputterpub.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/220px-cerebral_lobes1.png?w=185&h=216)
I loved heroic tales when I was small,
relating some to princesses, but more
to youngest sons and cabin boys and all
the challenges encountered. That was pure
enchantment for me, so I learned their ways:
the kindness to each lowly creature met;
adherence to the quest despite delays
and obstacles, through every sort of threat.
With fairy tales and Greek mythology
and legends of romantic errantry
I filled my fancy and I fed my head.
I even longed to be a boy instead.
I’d feint before I’d faint. I’d never swoon,
and unlike you, I still don’t give up soon.
(A Pre-Covid Piece)
Commuting yesterday, at nearly noon,
I noticed I felt free and oddly fine.
I focused on surroundings then, and soon
observed that every vista seemed benign.
Though weather’s weird, the air was warm and clear.
Though politics are dire, I’d no fret.
Nobody smelled too bad or stood too near
me on the street and train. I felt no threat.
It isn’t that I’m normally afraid
of where I walk, or whom I chance to meet,
but yesterday’s experiences made
me realize how much guarded on my feet
I am, how when outside I’m on alert.
I traveled with no threat or fear of hurt.
The deck deserves another waterproof.
It should have happened several months ago,
before we hunkered down and in, aloof
from viral load, from people, shop and show.
The bathroom has irregularities
the builder meant to fix, or tweak and ease.
Agreeing to address the issues now,
she’ll enter masked on Sunday to see how.
Of course I will be pleased the work is done,
but I don’t want these people coming here.
It isn’t a contagion that I fear,
but after months away from everyone,
reluctance is established. This is clear –
I’ve been too much at home this awful year.
I doubt my death will be a pretty sight;
I’ve lived too long to make a lovely corpse.
Most likely I’ll be in a bed, and might
be looking like the sort of beast that warps
a grandson’s dream to nightmare to recall.
My skin of corrugation will be cold.
My eyes will dry; my coat will be a pall.
I’ll be a spectral haggard to behold.
I wouldn’t want to touch me, or to scent
the fragrance my departure will release.
I’d spare you from the vision if I could.
But I won’t have that power. What I meant
will miss, I think. I hope on my decease
you’ll kiss my brow once more, and call me good.
What were the odds? My parents had to meet
and marry, and have intercourse one night,
enjoy a healthy pregnancy, and greet
me bearing borne and brimming with delight.
Although they erred, they let no one kid-glove me.
Abrupt and cold at times, they both did love me.
And sure I had some needs that went unmet,
but I felt safe enough, and feel it yet.
I lived more years than I imagined young,
and though I like to work, I had more luck
than I deserve – the time was right for me.
I settled where the air is soft, among
the trees and hummingbirds. Today I’m struck
awoken to my own prosperity.
Supposed to be a simple exercise,
composing every day a formal poem
in house arrest, I guess it’s no surprise
the longer quarantined the more I make.
So far one hundred and eleven tries –
the quantity outgrows a catalogue.
Perhaps I need more tags to organize
agglomeration born from time at home,
to designate the specimens I prize.
Isn’t it stunning, how stupid he is?
Ignorance married to bad attitude,
fully incapable – losing at biz,
only exampling how to be crude.
Isn’t it stunning, how dreadful they are?
Failing to dump him, not even for us,
acting like ethics are simple PR,
tossing experience under the bus.
Isn’t it stunning, how hard it’s become
to winnow perspective and facts from the news?
If this is a war (and the term isn’t dumb),
it’s daily more clear that our nation will lose.
It takes a while for catastrophe
to be accepted by the human mind.
We may react reflexively at once,
the way we mindlessly pull back from burn,
but full acceptance is a slower deal.
At first we try to bargain or deny.
Pandemic is upon us. None deny,
but some debate how much catastrophe
is real, how much a propaganda deal.
The ignorant insistence blows my mind.
I can’t defend the media, who burn
the bridges for the bites of bytes at once,
who were too few but honorable once.
Like chronic states of illness we deny
at first, the virus flares and spreads its burn –
a caterpillar of catastrophe
that eats the heavy body, stubborn mind,
and demonstrates it’s master of the deal.
A mindless virus propagates ordeal,
ignored by top and twisted leaders once
and now too late accepted by the mind
of many sloganeers who would deny
the holocaust, all grim catastrophe,
the smoke of civil union set to burn.
It’s everywhere. We can’t avoid the burn.
I yearn for information. I can deal
with episodes of deep catastrophe –
I’m old and I’ve survived some more than once –
but there’s few facts to cherish or deny,
and graphs do not illuminate my mind.
I seem to have an entertaining mind,
inspired every day to laugh or burn
with anger. So today I will deny
the plague, pretending we have no ordeal.
Remember how we moved and acted once?
Imagination masks catastrophe.
Today I cut catastrophe from mind,
pretend at once there’s candles I can burn.
I make a deal with news I can deny.
Appreciating
crows above my redwood deck
I loathe their white shit
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