Spring Day: a primary source (5/28/20)

A spotted fox snake
slips smooth from damp cool into
morning warmth. I watch.

Gentle rain, mid-day,
birdsong loud in clear, washed air.
(What is it they sing?)

Rabbits taste their fill,
licking drops from blades of grass,
ears tall, turned to me.

Sunset fire, old oak,
runnelled bark glowing orange-red
--a fine ambered scotch.

Nightfall, moon is low,
softened wind in trees beyond
whispers, all alone.

Trash-Talking: a primary source (5/21/20)

This morning was like all the ones before,
except, of course, how I forgot the all-
important step of pouring coffee grinds
into this old coffeemaker of mine.
Missing was the familiar deep-rich waft
of the dark-roasted Colombian bean.
Waiting for me, instead, when the machine
finished--something warmed and murky, but not
coffee, not anything remotely close.
I felt a moment's pity for myself
and for the ruined, empty, wasted filter,
its recycled life, raison d'etre,
now in the trash atop yesterday's used
filter--smug, proud, smirking, clutching its dregs.

Intimacies: a primary source (5/6/20)

"Grief makes everything intimate."

-- John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

__________

These days we say "Hello" to strangers on our walks.
I mean, not just the noncommittal nod and raised wave,
but we actually say, "Hello,"
along with, "How are you?"
to people we don't even know but feel we do.
"How are you?" we ask,
and we mean it.

These days we meet alone together
for micro-concerts from musicians
in their living-rooms not all that different
from our own, we notice, feeling a new connection to them.
Oh, I have that pillow--or used to, at least.
And that sconce, that picture: She likes horses.

And these days we gather separately as one
in the cluttered study of a former poet laureate,
who sits at a book-strewn desk--volumes of his published verse
sticky-noted with fluorescent flags to mark his pages,
semaphore motioning us forward,
speaking to us,
calling us in.

A silver shovel leans alone
against the back wall behind him
below a painted airplane
in clouds.

These days are the days of silent applause, assent, acclamation.
A choir of colorful voices singing in
yellow smiles, red hearts, blue thumbs.
Some to say, "I love you."
Some to say, "Thank you."
Some to say, "How are you?"
Some to say, "I hope all is well."
Some to say, "I miss you."
Some to say, "I will miss this."
Some to say, "This is good."
Some to say, "This means something."
Some to say, "Stay."
Some to say, "Don't go away."
Some to say, "I love you."

But these days I wonder if
(when all of this is over)
we really will remember.
Will we recall these days of forced separateness,
quarantined togetherness,
lonely intimacies forged of necessity,
longing, longed for, long-distance?

Cautious eyes catching glances
over our masks we wear to meet the masks we meet,
we carry along with us the ache of episodic memory,
though we don't go anywhere with it, these days,
aside from deeper into memory, deeper into ache,
like a stubbed toe in the dark, perhaps,
reminding us that this is what the world feels like,
this is what the living feel,
and consoling us with
some remembered future scene--

a crowded restaurant,
a single table,
the din of noise, and conversation, and kitchen
silverware and dishes and cups,
and laughter, and music.
A young waitress not old enough yet to call me "Hon"
will balance coffee in hand, my bill in the other,
and set it in a syrup spill beside my plate.
She will smile at me, then, and ask the inevitable about a refill,
adding, in a cigarette-voice beyond her years,
"Was everything good here, hon?"
And I will smile back to her, my mask at home, and answer,
"Yes. It was. Thank you. Everything was good...."
And I will mean it.