Ours was the Age
Of The Embrace.
The last of its kind.
Tender Mercy in the Time of Corona
Sunrise Shadows
Strange, in that I am not entirely solitary. The good husband, who turned bad and suddenly left me nineteen months ago for some imagined life that failed to materialize is here. That husband, with all he knows of science, was terrified of getting the virus. He petitioned to move into the guest room before the craziness had even set in. There were a thousand reasons to say no, but I could not have lived with the women who left him to his big empty house in town, with no yard and (so he claims) only a mattress on the floor. I said I would not cook, and haven't.
The runaway husband runs his company from my dining room table, leafs through recipe books, and prepares a commendable dinner every evening; weather permitting, he works on a victory garden, mows, and moves rocks outside.
I write and continue my political and community work from my cozy study. And prepare a different cocktail every evening.
It has worked out. Imagine I am the landlady and he is the boarder who cooks and does most of the chores to pay his ‘rent.’ He has kept terror at bay, and I—who had not turned on my stove even seven times in nineteen months--am gaining back my wifely fat.
And then it sets
Children cry out
In sleep dreaming
Of fearful flowers.
Cherry tree & river, 10 days in
River before evening
Sunset shadowed
In the shadow of summer
Strange things are growing
Twisting from damp earth
Suspiciously.
And this morning I was thinking of the beautiful, and very strong, young Bosnian woman who took us out on a small boat to swim in a blue cave off the Adriatic coast. The swim and the cave were memorable, but her story of waking up one day and finding their good neighbors had become their enemies, (reminiscent of Rwanda); dust and noise of bombs and gunfire, the chaos stayed with me. I remember few details other than she said that she spent her entire adolescence underground, hiding in a cellar.
The war happened that suddenly and what should have been (she expected to be) the most carefree time of her life was spent in darkness. Puts these times in sharp perspective. Corona came suddenly, yes. But our teens aren't hiding in basements, they're merely missing their proms and gradations.
Light
Blackdog looks toward river
My black dog barks
At the sun and
The sun retreats.
Candle For Sarah
My niece is hiding in the attic from her small children.
They call up the stairs for her. She is feverish and coughing.
It is possible that snow is falling outside their gray house.
We imagine the children calling and calling.
Revenge’s forked tongue Flickers at Liberty Fangs poised to strike.
We are a country Writhing beneath A headless snake.
Misty morning
Electric green
April’s Cover
Morning sun tugs back black billows to illuminate nuclear green grass slashed by silky crow wings.
A sudden quilt of cloud smothers out the sun.
The land goes still.
Eddy & the boys
“Heavenly shades of night are fallin
It’s twilight time. Out of the dusk
Your voice is calling…”
She has risen!
Resurrection
Early light of Easter morn A pair of bald eagles, The only thing flying. They are the American come back kids.
Easter tree
Nutshell
Time In A Nutshell
My ex is re-hanging the birdhouse shaped like a giant acorn that his father gave us the last Christmas he ever gave us anything, the Christmas after his wife died.
When he first hung the acorn five-year-old Paul Wyatt helped, chattering deliriously, by the sapling oak that today casts such a long shadow
Survivor
Survivor
Scarecrow tree still blooming Standing steadfast through a Couple centuries of Nature’s capricious temper tantrums.
Two summers ago, a fat bear Climbed the tree to get that apple, The one just out of reach, that Failed to fall too far from the tree.
Local lore claims Washington, After crossing the river right here, Passed over this sunken roadbed Shaded by a long line of apple trees.
Why did Washington cross the River? All that he could see was The other side of the mountain, The other side of the mountain Was all.
In The Way of Angels
So We’ve wandered through the forest to ask your guidance and protection. We are lost now, inexperienced, uncertain. Tuck our children, and theirs, under your wings light a torch, draw a sword, show us the way.
Angel? Angel?
Hey!
Deep forest flowers
This spring of isolation has been breath taking. Perhaps there have been springs as lovely, but--not being sheltered in place--there wasn't the time to immerse. Yesterday I gathered an occasional morel in this forest--I am said to own--and climbed a steep ridge to an open meadow royal purple with Larkspur, carpeted with the smallest trillium I've ever seen. The new leaves on the giant beech, oak, and cherry trees too young and not-yet-out enough to shadow the sunlight; an illumination of green. Don't think I've ever before spent 4 hours in this forest, always too focused on the beloved river. The bounty of Corona’s Splendid Spring.
