HAPPY NEW YEAR – 2022
January 3rd and the Sharp Shinned Hawk has returned to the feeder
Dropping into the cedar bush waiting for an old, slow dove
But it’s the red squirrel who drives my husband crazy
Rick and his wife Judy have taken a winter
Residence in our walls. Their bedroom quarrels
Legendary in the ceiling above my husband’s office.
I know the nights have been rough when I lay abed
Long into the morning stirred from slumber at the loud mutterings
Of my beloved below
“Fuck you, Rick!”
Yes, from the man who marched under his
banner of long hair
Fighting for a hopeful harvest for the world
Fighting against ugly forces intrinsic in warring hearts
My peace man
The silhouette against all those night fires
Set to capitalism
Arms always raised in righteous revolutionary anger
Never in surrender
Now sits at his desk perusing
The hopelessness in today’s headlines
Wishing the Sharp Shinned Hawk
Took prey larger than the dove.
G.D.F. 1/3/22
PANDEMIC POLITICS
What is there to make the heart swell
Against those ungovernable desires?
Wars; showdowns at
The corral
The jungle
The beach
The half-learned lessons class
The thin stream of info-wire
Signifying new battlegrounds
Sneaky. Anonymously mean
And wrong
Stabbing at our rucksacks
Full of unused Gods
•
What poetry can hold
What it can’t
Anger controlled
By rhyme or meter
Impolite bluster
Baroque or scant
Edgy words on pages teeter
Sweet noises overrun morning thunder
Evening song diminished in
Skeins of days torn asunder
•
May November carry our souls
From a hell lined with poetry stole
From that Shredded Parchment,
Now lying in confetti baskets,
To be strewn in ignorant rapture,
Over brides, babies, and caskets
OF TIME AND DREAMS
What is that time called
Just before sleep fully takes over
When the night-mind, in acid-etched clarity
Lines up the day’s matters
Forcing them to kneel in pain’s shadow?
What is that time called
That sounds its claxon for battle
Swinging the Damoclesean sword
Slashing away
The nubile dreams of the innocent?
The time just before being delivered
To the mercy of that clamor
Accompanying the onset of dreams
That time when heart and brain come
Together each with its own music;
Sharps and flats dueling for supremacy
Offering a clarion call sometimes
So lovely as to be taken as anthem
Shepherding the heart
Through sunsets,
Births,
Deaths,
Success,
Failure;
The basic drawing-and-quartering of life.
What is that time called?
STAYING POSITIVE WHILE STARING AT THE BODY COUNT
Venting frustration
Failed attempts at normal
But normal, escaped, is now
Free-range
Arranged on social media
With intermittent WTFs
I’ve overheated
I’m angry
It’s Florida
Housework –
I’ve ironed clothes that wrinkle
Wishing life and virus could be
So smoothed
A Grocery run –
New hunting and gathering ritual
Homemade masks to protect
From the angry uncovered faces
Staring at my NY plates with disdain
As if my name were Wuhan
Rather than Hot Mess
With five-o’clock wine
I watch the sunset
Tossing its diamonds
Upon the waters of Newfound Channel
Week five:
Quarantined in paradise
ON BIG PINE KEY: QUARANTINED WITH WORDS
My words,
They’ve marched in on dreams,
Printed conversations with those
Who’ve mastered their form
They’ve fallen from my tongue in hailstorms –
WTFs after reading NYT’s homepage
Today, I am stuck at the intersection of
“If only” and “Where to now?”
30 minutes ago, over coffee and sunrise
I knew where I was going
Now, not so much
We walk the dog
I look for the cardinal who had
Been singing his bright red song
For weeks now
He’s gone – beating the lockdown
Finding a mate who loves his music
But I am still here
Quarantined in paradise
Wrestling with each letter
Clanging demands
Words; unheard cries
Unraveling the earth
Before it dies
QUARANTINE: Week Two
Like our electronic toys
The world has a reset button
When we ignore her overheating
She admonishes with flames
When we foul our nests
She sends the oceans in retort
And when we ignore the world’s health,
Its inhabitants’ well-being,
Choosing to chase vicious luxuries
Because – we can
She sends the enemy invisible
The virus incurable,
Barely namable
Scoffing dreams and schemes
Our world has reset
An algorithm for stimulus
Six-degrees of separation
Leaves room for empathy
We leave food for the hungry
We drive the immobile
We care for the sick
We handsomely tip the daring
Souls who venture into the
Empty streets of commerce
Bringing food to those of us with money – to eat
But, the natural world wants us
To open our eyes
She wants us apart enough
To see those lives
That will never change – even with
A conquered virus
She wants us to see the fallacy of
Putting profit before people
She wants us to see those
Who have always been
Quarantined by poverty
In spirit and in purse
Yes, the world has reset.
Sadly, the culling
Won’t be equitable
Reset people
Reset!
Gwen's World 