This collection started with the impact of COVID-19 and the sense of being surrounded by a force that couldn’t be opposed or reconciled, but yet had to be addressed. I started off with the inspiration of W.B. Yeats. To take away the fear and depression of old age, I needed to learn how to sing. What I would sing about became a series of six meditations on how to live in the world with the coronavirus.
A New Song (March 2020)
“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing…”
Sailing to Byzantium, William Butler Yeats
Mock orange blossoms
scent the air.
A Stellar’s jay fights
with a squirrel
over the sunflower seeds
in the bird feeder.
I follow the
caw-caw-caw
of the busy crows
up the nine stone steps
to the sky garden
holding tightly to the rail,
and listening to their chittering,
like a ratchet turning fast,
click-click-click-click.
Still, normal life seems
suddenly elusive.
It is early days,
infectious disease authorities say,
It’s not a question of if, but when.
Nine new deaths in the Northwest
and my immunity compromised
by targeted therapy.
I wonder what’s left,
what remains.
When I want to sing
the notes come out wrong,
the tune lost.
Even so, I try to learn
a new song
like the crows’ rattle-call,
the words
that I choose
to explore
are vulnerability
attachments
surrender
joy and
tranquility
in the midst
of a gathering
inevitability.
Vulnerability
Stop. Just stop. /It is no longer a request. It is a mandate. /We will help you. / We will bring the supersonic, high-speed merry-go-round to a halt. /We will stop…the frenetic, hurried rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our single and shared beating heart.
— Letter from the Coronavirus, Kristin Flynts
I
COVID-19 is not a poison.
It is droplets in the air that one can walk into,
like a spider’s web.
It exists, just as we exist,
to be seen for what it is.
It needs to be respected,
understood, but not feared.
How do you understand a virus —
a one-dimensional, conscious-less verb
that replicates because it can?
As Rilke says, the world is not against us.
If it has terrors, they are our terrors;
If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us;
If there are dangers, we must try to love them.
It keeps coming back,
the sense of threat.
We transmit it to each other.
When we most need comfort,
our safety means distance.
To replicate
the virus preys on our need
to congregate.
Delicate, clever, elegant.
The virus has used our greatest strength
and made it our greatest weakness.
II
We are strongest together,
arm-in-arm,
leaning on each other,
collaborating,
innovating.
We build to suit our desires:
skyscrapers, airplanes, computers.
We have separated ourselves above,
but the virus has outstripped our usefulness.
This virus will ride inside us,
with droplets to share.
It is becoming a part of us now.
We will always have it with us.
And what is left behind?
Stadiums empty,
highways bereft,
the testaments
to human-centered design
idle,
quiet.
Now we can hear the hum of the planet.
And God said,
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea
And the fowl of the air
And over the cattle
And over all the earth
And over every creeping thing
That creepeth upon the earth
God is wrong.
We are part of the earth,
not the stewards of it.
This virus is in the atmosphere.
It has a message for us.
It is telling us it’s time to stop.
Listen.
Find a world-centered vision.
Adjust.
We are all ill.
We are not well.
We have overgrazed the land,
overfished the sea.
We are tangled in a spiderweb
of deceit and delusion.
We think our story
is the only story.
But we are wrong.
We’re not from this planet.
We are of this planet.
Attachments
If we are quiet and still in the moment,
we can witness change and accept it as inevitable. – Ram Dass
A crow and a squirrel are having a face-off
on Sunday morning, when Molly Bloom launches
herself out the door barking ferociously, asserting
her claim on her territory.
We live in the world of our egos,
dressed up and defended. It’s how we are,
trying to figure things out about this COVID-19,
a novel virus. The world is full of clues, says Gene,
but they’re all mixed up
with meaningless things.
And here I am in the at-risk category in the path of the virus,
Zoom talking with other poets.
I come in from the warm sun,
drift into a sleepy wakefulness in my chair, hallucinate
a dream, a prior time, my wife as a younger woman.
I speak to her. She’s not there. I say to myself,
This is your vision playing tricks on you.
But there is a sadness to it, a letting go
of what was for what is.
Dying is ongoing.
we let go these dreams of who we thought we were,
no longer asserting our territory
or claiming victories.
We’re all just walking each other home.
Surrendering
You need to find a place to stand in relation to change
where you are not frightened by it. – Ram Dass
Upon getting out of bed, I stand up,
start forward toward the night light,
when I realize I am not in control of my body.
One moment I am dizzy,
the next I am on the floor.
Parkinson’s will have its way,
but it makes me a wiser man.
I need to make a place for it,
accommodate changes.
We manipulate our lives so we can see
what we want to see.
By embracing change
I can see what is happening,
what has happened.
I am left with recovering, healing.
Surrendering does not always imply giving up.
It can also mean letting go,
accepting what is.
Growing up I learned to surrender
into the summer swelter of Alabama,
allowing the heat in,
accepting the humid weather,
becoming one with the environment,
no longer fighting the heat
but sinking in
and finding pleasure in it.
Joy
Now that I am old
and live in the moment,
I take pleasure in the joy of others:
my wife singing
as she sews a scene
into the fabric of her quilted creations,
unencumbered
by self-consciousness.
Like my barely-walking son Nathan
speeding awkwardly toward
birds eating birdseed in the park.
An explosion of wings, startling,
then stopping, spinning around,
The surprised look on his face,
the sheer wonder of it.
Or my son Caleb at three
running into the bedroom
leaping up on the bed and shouting,
Oh, I can’t wait ‘til I’m four!
Learning how to take joy in
is like learning how to sing
to participate in a rhythm
outside myself.
Tranquility
Afterwards
we lie back
in the heat
of our bodies’
exertions, floating
still coupled
drifting
downward
for landing
on Tranquility Bay.