A WELL TRAVELED HEART

Tag: coronavirus

  • ADRIFT

    ADRIFT

    Adrift in time,
    days wash by
    without regard
    for date or name.
    A whole week
    vanished in August.
    There is nowhere to go.
    No one wants our dollars.
    Once we modeled democracy.
    Our story now's a dark comedy.
    The President says the virus
    will vanish like a mist.
    No problem, he’s got this.
    Magical realism is fine for
    Allende and Marquez,
    but has no place in a country where
           people die alone in crowded hospitals
           city folks swarm to the country
           morgue trailers line city streets.
    A pandemic’s not a minor event,
    a slight inconvenience.
    It stops the world.
    No magic can blind us
    to the growing 
    pile of corpses.
  • NOTICE

    NOTICE

    A blue jay struts across the porch
    to forage in our planters.
    The red streak at eye level's a cardinal.
    White “ribbons” wrap the trees - plastic prayer flags
    to a God, gnome or Goddess unknown.
    A cuban lizard pulls one off
    the live oak on the corner.
    As I leave Johnnie’s Bakery,
    an Agama, his head and tail stripe
    the color of children’s aspirin,
    races ahead of me.
    Johnnie’s bread has the taste of hope
    hand-made, crusty, fresh.
    So too does the air, laced with scent of
    gardenia, magnolia and surf. 
    Beauty confounds the thought of so many dead.
    Mourners bereft of goodbye are blind
    with grief while fear heightens others'senses.
    How can such extremes of bliss and horror
    cohabit this planet?
    The return of wildlife, clean air and
    quiet seas make it clear
    this earth can shrug us off
    without notice.