Covid Calendar, or, Dancing with Droplets
By Heather Dubrow
1
It’s February. Times outside. Back then, yet just before.
It rests, not ruffled by its news, nothing to dismay.
I doze past nine, and will doze past page twenty-four.
News from somewhere . . . China? Spain? . . . all are far away.
Neither paper nor readers will be blown away
by wind – we’ll miss wind of – when we open our doors.
I’ll read of fashion, baseball (Astros’ shady play),
and learn how best to choose new rugs for these wood floors.
Many of these trifling stories leave us yawning,
and while I doze he fashions pancakes – what a prize.
I’m roused neither by dawn nor by tomorrow’s dawning
of midnights that will soon black out each day’s sunrise.
In March new facts will knock loud on our porch’s door.
Lead story: Covid-19 will shut down before.
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2
Covid-19 is shutting down before.
For midnight crashed the old world as I dozed.
The times and daily Times knock down locked doors.
Our president? Mouth open, ears, eyes closed.
Dark chocolate, peanut brittle, comfort food,
and crosswords – reach out for these distractions.
But hope is brittle, words now crossed and rude.
Other leaders? Wilderness of factions.
But wait – our chive plant turns towards us, so near,
and grows new shoots. though they sing thin and low.
Attend that music, poet. Do not hear
brazen blares from ambulances below:
Their tempting, taunting siren song: “Flee this disease?
It gardens only death.” Yet chives still try to please.
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3
But can our chives still please us? Can deans’ thank yous cheer
us? Zoom forward, profs, since smart techies teach us how
to use tomorrow’s tools. But tomorrow’s what deans fear.
Will enrollments plummet? Hear budgets crashing now.
Students barred from dorm rooms: warnings from on high –
leave all your plants and friends. Go home. You must take flight.
One last kiss for your girlfriend? No – don’t even try.
The virus wants to kiss her. So don’t risk its might.
Remember when we caught some viruses by clicking
onto a pfishing, feral, phony online link?
Nowadays might dread viruses come from picking
up mail or the wrong apple? Or from the dirty sink?
Who feeds cats back on campus? Feral, yes, but dears.
We read feral numbers that feed our wildest fears.
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4
Feral numbers feed wildest fears.
Canned beans and canned comforts we hoard.
Walk fast. He’s unmasked. And she nears.
Death snuggles near metals. Cardboard?
Is the park still safe to walk through?
Expert 1 impugns Expert 3.
So my shaking hand holds tight to
what I learned at my father’s knee.
“Squeeze each finger and rub your wrist.”
Doctor Dad taught me how to scrub.
But if I’m in disease’s fist,
Dad’s too late. Father, there’s the rub.
Practice his safety tips and hints.
Yet Death’s father still winks and glints.
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5
Death’s father, a resurgence, winks and glints
too near to our locked door. Too close to bear.
And yet the five-room home inside by dint
of play turns into castle in the air.
Comic endings? safety, silver lining.
First write ACT I: playwrights must pursue
some conflict there? – no, write instead fine dining:
we’ll turn foodie and learn to knead anew.
ACT II: now some solaces to cheer us:
thank God we have the funds to pay the rent,
Sherlock Holmes waits on the table near us.
What luck! these unread books seem heaven-sent.
But do demons or saints pen Covid’s plot ?
Dare we guess its closure? But dare we not?
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6
Dare we guess what end is coming? But dare we not?
Still cling to this comfort: great lectures from my room –
I’m star of screen and laptop! No look – someone has got
into our program – sending porno – they’re bombing Zoom.
A new solution: instead turn back for relief
to my beloved partner’s pancakes. Yes, his care
is priceless – he coughs again – a warning of grief?
My well-baked fears rise like soufflés. But don’t go there.
Third salve: our handsome objects. On that dining table
lay my parents’ sterling. Now use it (but first dust),
for what stays sterling in our tarnished fable,
this world where even stainless steel will rust?
Yet this stanza, this month might still close bright.
Vaccines? A dawn of hopes in this sirened night.
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7
Vaccines. Cheerful news in this sirened night.
But dare we cheer? New darknesses may dawn tomorrow.
AstraZeneca’s statistics exposed: not right.
And might this strain eclipse new hopes with sorrow?
Christmas parties. Reckless hugging, so little masking.
Grandson exposed to what he thought was flu.
Is Grandma’s death stuffed in his backpack? Just asking.
Like crown verse, might Corona’s endings start anew?
No, revolt against those fears. And here turn
to good tidings of safely protecting.
Hospitals, drugstores can now, we learn,
bestow shots to prevent our infecting.
Wait – supplies? Lies shot down while deaths and hopes still soar.
January. Times outside. Not yet. Yet just before?
Copyright © 2021 by Heather Dubrow.
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Respect
By Marge Piercy
I live within a mile of the sea
but haven’t entered it since
a white shark ripped apart
a young surfer. I stand above
on the edge of the dune
but even when I see a fin
way out, I back away as if
the great white could fly.
The sea belongs to its own.
We’re always trespassers,
visitors who leave mounds
of trash to pollute its waters.
The ocean owes us nothing.
It knows it will outlast us.
Copyright © 2021 by Marge Piercy.
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Carrying On
By Bruce Bennett
I make a list of things I have to do,
Then cross each off and feel a mild content.
It does not matter when, or where, time went,
So long as I replace the old with new,
Telling myself each day that I got through,
Accomplishing, subservient to intent,
Each petty task, no matter what it meant.
I’ve carried on, and my regrets are few.
Though I do have regrets. I’m well aware
When I review my lists, they don’t add up
To much of anything, my daily fare,
A little like a beggar with his cup
Who’s grateful for some coins so he can say
That he has made it through another day.
Copyright © 2021 by Bruce Bennett.
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Coming Back from Lawrence Welk
By Bruce Bennett
My mother would get lost in Lawrence Welk.
“I couldn’t get back from there,” she told us once.
We laughed, but it was clear she was upset.
She even worried she shouldn’t watch the program.
She’d scrooch down in her chair and stare, entranced,
transported. I would see the black and white;
hear those lame jokes; that syncopated music.
It seemed so hokey. But she was clearly there.
Last night I happened on a rerun. Watched
entranced, transported. My mother and I were there,
caught in that place, that time, those jokes, that music,
and all at once I recognized the magic.
I finally saw why she so loved to go,
and why, once there, she didn’t wish to come back.
Copyright © 2021 by Bruce Bennett.
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Haunted by a Death
By Bruce Bennett
I’m haunted by a death. Not one that’s near me.
Not one that touches anyone I know.
I can’t reach out to someone who will hear me.
It happened. It’s a fact now. It is so.
So many years had passed with no connection.
No contact. Really, what is there to say?
It’s not a matter open to correction.
Besides, why should it matter anyway?
The problem is, it does. And that’s what haunts me.
What might have been. Of course, that’s a cliché.
But nonetheless, that hangs about and taunts me.
We missed that chance to share our lives. Today
I see that and I know that. Now the most
I’ll ever keep of you is this vague ghost.
Copyright © 2021 by Bruce Bennett.
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What Didn’t Happen
By Bruce Bennett
“The way it really happened does not matter.
What matters is the way I tell the tale,”
the storyteller lectured our small circle.
“Stick close to mundane details, and you’ll fail.
The accurate will sink you if it’s boring.
The ‘truth’ does not reside in simple fact.
Your simple duty’s to drive home the meaning.
Your sole allegiance is to that one act
of making real to others what is vivid.
What you create will then live for them too . . . .”
He finished, and we sat a while in silence.
As always, I was thinking about you:
How I would try to make you feel the way
I felt by what I’d write and what I’d say.
Copyright © 2021 by Bruce Bennett.
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Old Foes
By James B. Nicola
That You are there would not be problematic
if you were satisfied with being you.
But since you would upset the status quo
we rub against each other, which brings static.
Then I feel predisposed to being there
as you have been dead set in being here.
I don’t know why it’s so, but as you near,
an unseen hand of Someone Else somewhere
compels. But what if I refuse, with mind
and heart, not merely instinct? Oh! Instead
of furthering the curse of human kind
by striking out until each face turns red,
let’s shake each other’s hands, thus saving face,
and let us only damn the lack of space.
Copyright © 2021 by James B. Nicola.
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The Savagery Required
By James B. Nicola
The savagery required is like a hateful
meanness I have tried not to give way to.
If you are just like me, I should be grateful
for having run into someone like you.
Who then shall take the first step, who shall make
the pass, and risk all; who shall be the an-
imal, in spurts? To devolve is to take
the first step in becoming all a man
is, and can be, right? Without it, I’m half
a man; with only love, the Puritan
is the only victor. Look at me and laugh,
why don’t you? I will too, and maybe we
can laugh into each other, and maybe
become a single thing, half meant to be.
Copyright © 2021 by James B. Nicola.
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Poem for Mortalities
By Stephan Delbos
Rilke did not want to know
the anonymous simplicity
of leukemia;
you must change your life
alone into death.
A dusty moth
twitches in my right lung.
At night I slide backward
through stations of dream
afraid yet unrepentant.
Copyright © 2021 by Stephan Delbos.
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A Mote of Dust
By Paula Bonnell
speaks up. It says
“Philosophy is a disease of the mind.
One hornpipe is worth a thousand philosophies.”
Then it adds, “The right name
of what you call ‘Brownian movement’
is ‘Dance of the Sunlight’.”
As I contemplate these assertions,
I feel they might fit
in my essay, “Toward a
Philosophy of the Dance.”
Copyright © 2021 by Paula Bonnell.
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Again, Thankfully
By Paula Bonnell
And all the invisible topography of the air,
its cloud mountains as mutable as its rivers of wind.
Into its boundlessness the sleeper rises
from the dark canyons and corridors of the night,
hearing birds’ sallies to the sun and each other
against the continuo of breeze or rainladen wind,
as the white enlightenments of day
erase the dreamworld’s phantasms.
Before sentences, before answers, before
questions, before gossip or denunciations,
before the dental auguries or
events which obliterate even the dental
comes this interlude, this intermezzo,
these variations
Copyright © 2021 by Paula Bonnell.
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Election Day Evening 2020
By Constance Hooker Koons
Mars lords over the eastern sky as darkness falls in November.
A vigorous two-day wind has finally
relented. It is bitter, January cold.
I bundle up in winter gear and head
out for my evening stamina-building
slog – down steep, narrow Church
Street and then a sharp left onto the long
winding Main Street hill. I need a break
from poll numbers, predictions, hand-
wringing. On the hillside the setting sun
washes the crowns of the oaks pink before
the whole sky turns salmon with whisps
of purple-gray clouds. As I turn down Mill
Alley and head for home, I spot red Mars
right where it is supposed to be.
Copyright © 2021 by Constance Hooker Koons.
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In Polarized Times
By Constance Hooker Koons
An employee of the general store
clips and hoists the American flag
up the flagpole every morning
just before eight. From my living
room window I watch what appears
to be a solemn task accomplished
with respect, the unfolded flag
never touching the ground. A chore
rich with meaning and tradition.
I want this, want to begin my day
with a ritual, want to feel reverence,
a moment of silent worship –
for something. For the brilliant blue
fall sky, golden leaves raining down.
Copyright © 2021 by Constance Hooker Koons.
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Twilight – Third Day of Fall
By Constance Hooker Koons
Above the black silhouette of the pines
the sky to the west is the color of orange
sherbet interspersed with layers of pale
blue. The air smells like grilled burgers
and dying leaves. The crickets, not long
for the world now, have lost their gusto.
The solar lights flicker on. A gray catbird
calls out in its raspy mew, then the plaintive
cry of a loon. Soon the bats will appear.
I dread closing windows, closing
down, closing in, the silence of winter.
Tonight is still full of hums, cheeps
and trills. The loon, closer now, sounds
her lonely cry again and again.
Copyright © 2021 by Constance Hooker Koons.
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The Sifter Sound
By Marcy Jarvis
My mother’s flour sifter with the tin
spring action handle and its red knobed crank
delivered little snowstorms to the bank
of that blue band bowl’s lake of porcelain.
She sifted till it drifted to a mound
of snow that matched the feathers Hulda shook
from bedding in the clouds outside around
the pleasant kitchen window where we’d look
out as she baked the cookies and the bread,
the Christmas cakes, the batter, the salt dough
and rolled out crusts when up we sprang from bed
while laughing nervously because we’d know
she always turned the sifter upside down
to spank it so’s to knock the sifter sound.
Copyright © 2021 by Marcy Jarvis.
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Introduction to Bach
By Jean L. Kreiling
Some of them will listen, some will not.
I’m sure of this before I see their faces,
before I learn their names. I have a shot
at opening their ears, and my pulse races
with first-day nerves as usual. I know
that this old music might adjust the beat
of their young hearts, and what they hear below
the shiny surface of a tune might meet
what roils beneath their skin, might be a clue
to their own secrets. Not that I can tell
them that – no, I can only lead them through
their listening, then let the music sell
itself. I’m just the middleman, a guide
who turns the music on and steps aside.
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I turn the music on and step aside,
not three feet from an inky snake that coils
along a front-row arm, fangs open wide
around the young man’s thumb; a master’s oils
could hardly render fierceness with more force.
Behind the boy’s half-hooded eyes, within
his muscled silence, does there lurk a source
of warmer-blooded danger? On his chin
grows just a hint of beard; his fingernails
are clean, his neck well-scrubbed. He slouches like
a kid prepared for boredom, one who fails
a lot, but not like one prepared to strike.
The hand that he won’t raise must bleed with ink.
What will he hear in Bach? What will he think?
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What will the others hear? What will they think
as parts are layered and beats subdivide?
The woman by the window taps a pink
iPhone, her rhythm skillful but not tied
to Bach’s neat meter. When her eyes meet mine,
she puts the phone away – I’ve got this glare
that often works. She then strives to align
her book and notebook; next she smooths her hair.
She’s busy, and she wants to please someone –
not me, I’m sure, but her intensity
might be transferable. She’s just begun
to make her life her own; the clarity
of Bach may well appeal to her. This weave
of well-timed notes may tempt her to believe.
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Though well-timed notes may tempt her to believe
in Bach, or art, or beauty, there’s a guy
slumped in the back – the one whose hat and sleeve
declare faith in the Red Sox – who may try
my patience. Just two minutes into class,
he’s nodding, just about into a nap.
If that becomes a habit, he won’t pass,
but I’m not sure he cares. Still, he may snap
out of his lethargy if he just feels
these vigorous vibrations – how they dance
and run and leap, each phrase chasing the heels
of yet another. He may have a chance,
if Bach and I can keep him from his sleep.
For him, the learning curve may well be steep.
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For many here, the learning curve is steep,
but others find they’ve got an ear – a knack
for noticing the details in a sweep
of sound, the skill of following the track
of Bach’s ideas. A young man with wild hair
and rimless glasses, in a middle row,
is perched right at the front edge of his chair
as if to inhale an arpeggio
or fall into a cadence. Will he take
the time to learn what makes this so enthralling?
And can I meet his challenge? Can I make
his breathless interest last, and keep him falling?
He barely blinks: he seems to see the meeting
of sound and sense, he knows each note is fleeting.
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As sound and sense converge, my chance is fleeting:
I’ll reach them in ten minutes or I won’t.
It’s nearly noon, and they’d rather be eating;
I understand, though they assume I don’t.
Two students whisper – vital information,
I’m sure – but will they even hear the Bach?
Another focuses her concentration
on ancient desk graffiti, then the clock.
But there are six or eight or maybe nine
already won by sounds they won’t forget;
one doodles, but he seems to draw a line
for each line of the Bach – he’s not lost yet.
I’ll do my best – Herr Bach deserves no less –
but I won’t have unqualified success.
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No, I won’t have unqualified success,
and Bach won’t strike exactly the right chord
in all these ears. I’m saddened, I confess,
when Bach leaves some of them confused or bored.
I want them all to hear what sings to me:
the magic wed to mathematics, light
and darkness deeply felt, vitality
and cleverness that whet the appetite
for more. As always, I will ask them first,
So what do you think? – and I’ll try to learn
from their replies. We’ll spend an hour immersed
in melody and rhythm, trill and turn,
bass line and beat. I’ll give it all I’ve got,
but some of them will listen, some will not.
Copyright © 2021 by Jean L. Kreiling.
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