Heaven

No one tells you how hard dying can be:

weeks and months and years sometimes

of silence, of separation, of being close,

but still so far away. 

Grasping the inevitable, yet,

maintaining positivity in

that long goodbye.

And no one tells you how quickly death can come,

One moment here, another gone

so fast, no warning, just missing

that laugh, that response,

that casual hug,

the inconceivable goodbye

that is forever.

Remember, however, that

on the other side, there is a heaven:

a place of joyous discovery.

Remember the quarter you found

in the parking lot when you were 6?

Heaven's a lot like that.

Unexpected surprises.

Your grandma, again bearing cookies,

the teachers you loved once, the aunts and uncles,

gone for years, but loving you still.

Think of your dog, buried long ago,

leaping again into your arms: 

Heaven's a lot like that.

Unqualified love.

The joy of seizing opportunities you'd missed along the way—

all the happy endings you’d imagined

for yourself, come to heavenly fruition,

a veritable Hallmark movie version

of a less-than-Hallmark life.

Heaven's a lot like that.

Unimaginable rewards.

No one told you how hard it would be;

today and all the grinding yesterdays

of pain, frustration, and tears.

But there is a heaven ahead:

a joyous place, where all the lost

are magically found again:

Happy reunions.

Don't ask me how I know;

Maybe I just believe...

Heaven's a lot like that.

 

Shoot

Another shooting, another gun,

legal or not, ghost or real--a gun

that shoots indiscriminately

another innocent (or maybe not)

but someone who did not deserve to die

this way, before their time..

A gun creates a fatherless child,

a frightened mother,

an angry neighborhood,

a tragedy.

A gun kills.

Not just people, but trust.

Not just a man, but hope.

A gun is a weapon of war,

made for battlefields, now employed

in city streets or living rooms

in informal wars declared by

the fearful, the angry, the deluded:

wars no-one can win,

imprisoning us all.

Why So Many Pictures?

I paper my digital world with pictures:

scenery, people, food, and flowers—

color and shape and symmetry,

composition and order that

I often cannot find

in the daily news.

These are the fragments that make sense

amidst the discord that runs rampant—

these are the lovely things that war with

the shootings, the cruelties, the hate:

these pieces are what is true

and lasting and beautiful.

Hold them fast.

Fountains

The fountain in my garden died.

The pump gave up its ghost

and I am faced with disassembly

of a 6-foot cement behemoth:

basin upon basin upon basin

containing nothing but last week's rain

which morphed into something 

ghastly green and swamp-like.

This is the metaphor for my pandemic life: stalled,

silent, inoperable; ponderous

and immovable. I am dull and dry,

devoid of sparkle-- and, often

repetitive, repetitive, repetitive:

as stagnant and swampy as that looming garden colossus.

Imagine, however, a new medium: imagine, 

if you can, from the depths of our dark pandemic well,

a reinvention, a purpose, a re-creation.

Plant one foot in pandemic, the other in the possible.

Imagine flowing flowers, streaming from that basin tower... 

Plant them.

Imagine the eruption of art and poetry from this arid, too-quiet time...

Create them.

Imagine that time stood still for these several months

while we caught our breath,

while we found our footing,

while we found ourselves.

Imagine our lives... reimagined..

Blank Pages

 

i have on my desk a year of blank pages:

so little worth recording.

A year of breakfast, lunch, and dinner

that marked the day in unremarkable segments.

A year of prowling through attic and basement,

sifting, discarding, noticing what had gone unnoticed.

A year of realization of what we had,

missing the everyday, missing people, missing faces.

We’ve lived that year in the uncertain gap  

between reality and imagination, 

between the evening news and

the awful possibilities that plagued our sleep.

Blank pages,

for who could write the story

of the missing, of the lonely, of the fearful times

we’ve had? Who could write

of what we learned about ourselves

and others while we were apart?

This Morning

 The sky is brush-stroked blue,

with streaks of golden morning.

India-inked trees stand

strategically placed to balance

the composition.

I am here again;

at the inception of a new year,

a chilly morning with a warming sky and

a hopeful new day

skimming across the river.

Waiting

I am already making lists of words
I never want to hear again. 
Hoax. Witch hunt. Tremendous. 
In fact, any superlative.
And let’s not forget tweet, "Truth" Social,
or fake news. Alternative facts.
and the roll call of names: Hegspeth, Kash,
Caroline, J.D., Kristi, Miller, RFK, Pam Bondi

and the list of guilty minions 

too numerous to count.

I am looking forward to the day

when I won’t need a scorecard to keep track 

of the members of the cabinet, and their lack of qualifications;

and the prosecutors who resign 

rather than answer to the revenge plans 

of an untethered lunatic.

I’m waiting to wake up in the morning 

without hearing that a new outrage 

is dominating the headlines, 

without a new constitutional crisis arising, 

without an unspecified idiocy on the horizon. 

I find that I am tired

of spineless politicians 

who hold their political careers to be 

more important than their constitutional obligations. 

I am tired of lies. I am weary 

of empty promises designed to provoke 

cheers at super-spreader rallies; I am weary 

of the stress and the fury and 

the knot in my stomach

when the president appears on the news. 

I can no longer bear the elevation of ignorance,

the disbelief in science; the promotion of hatred and violence,  

the attacks on innocent people who are,

for the most part, just trying 

to make it through as best they can.

What has happened to respect, to honor, to integrity? 

Is compassion out of style?   

Who are these pious zealots 

who have forgotten the Golden Rule?

or just abbreviated it to “Do unto others” 

and do it in the worst possible way.

I pray for your return, America.

I pray for the end of Trump, and all his yes-men,

and those who affirm his acts by their silence. 

I pray for a new beginning.