Johns Hopkins Covid 19 Map

I have become addicted to checking the daily numbers of new cases of covid 19.  I turn to the WHO, the CDC or my state’s CDC, but most often the Johns Hopkins map. The awareness came over me a few days ago that numbers cannot tell me anything about the people who are dying to give the world those figures. They are not just young or old, famous or unknown, rich or poor. They are people who had lives.
After my long dry spell with no writing, this poem has come.

Johns Hopkins Covid 19 Map

What was your name, number ninety-nine thousand, two hundred ten?

Was it Akmed or Mustafa?

Mike or Chunhua? Did your friends

call you Anna Maria or George?

Were you mother-blessed “Emma”

or street-baptized Blade?

Were you scared as you died in the hallway 

alone on a gurney? You lay invisible 

among too many to treat,

too many to save. 

Or on a ventilator did you still pass?

Anxious and drawn, angel faces

hovered in masks, bodies gowned. 

Did they check blood levels,

monitor blipping sounds?

Did you hear the beeping stop?

Did you slip away in your room

at home, your family afraid to touch,

to kiss, to hold your trembling hand?

Could you not catch the butterflies 

Of fleeing breath?

Were you unnamed?

Only a number on admittance, 

was the street your home?

Did you end up with tag on toe,

body bag, unknown, unmourned?

You, number ninety-nine thousand, two hundred ten, 

you’re lost to me here in tallies of countries and states.

You left behind toys or a car, 

unpaid bills. Stories, perhaps, of you in a war.

Most important, dear human, did you know

that you were loved?

Were you loved? Oh, please, 

say that you were you loved

before Corona took your name.

Death of a Salesman

for my father

When that old gold-digger Cancer married him
she was only in it for what she could get.
She took him for everything he had, while I was
on the phone with my American dream--
one ballerina, one soccer player, minivan,
fireplace and wall-to-wall by a lap-edged lake.
My 'coholic husband worshipped at work,
and I bent the ear of the god of
the light blue sanctuary who inhabited
a place where they were nailing
another arm to the building's cross.

I was eating heavily then
but what was eating him was eating him,
gnawing holes until at last he lay: translucent lace.
When I lifted the veil from the bed
there was only a stain of pain and loneliness he
never meant for anyone to see.

We darted in and out from busy lives,
my sister, brothers, I.
"Love" was mentioned often, but it
was the kind that left him to his
nightmares.  In truth, I thought this only just,
for the way he had made my mother's life one
long bad dream before he finally poured
the bottles out for good.

Still, he carried us through childhoods with
stories in the dark, sang the stars for our rewards,
and taught us to whistle to the birds.
He planted apple trees and strawberries
and plotted with the sound of words for
the wonderful tyranny of laughter.

What really carried him those last long months
was morphine and the priest's promise
of a cup of wine in the best of company
some day soon.
             

Fatal Kind of Deafness

There were times, mostly winters, in this lovely house when my choices seemed between solitary confinement and solitary confinement.

You do not die of loneliness.
Carrying the weight
of your own soul through
the hallways of the night,
hearing only the whisper of
the dead and living gone--
this is not fatal.  Memory
and fantasy mingle well.

Worry
when the stars stop breathing.
Worry
when the whispered
prayers of dark trees
no longer echo in your mind,
or ocean's tides exert no
voice in the choices of your life.

When all the music
in the dropping of a pin
ceases to ease the wringing
of your pain-wracked heart,
and you stop believing in
a day after tomorrow,
know that your mortal
illness has set in.

The Wheat and the Tares

(Daughters of the King, my friend rebukes me, are never weeds.)

My father was only a king of dreams.
I married Pontius for security and his
mastery of everything, including our bed.

I learned to love the man, packaging
my life with his, even here in this
forsaken and uncivilized post.

We dine with adjuncts, their wives,
and local potentates. Our table boasts
the best this scrubby little tributary

can offer, and as procurator
Pontius imports delicacies from across
the Empire. We live above it all.

Yet, I am fascinated by the young
Teacher. So apolitical.  So radically
unwise and generous with care.

I collect stories of every woman
with whom he speaks. Secretly
I send gold coins with Joanna and

Susannah.  And if, when I finally slip
away to meet him, he calls me
"daughter," it is only to open my heart:

I weep like a silly child.

I tell Pilate to have nothing to do
with this man's death, but see
how he listens to me?

It's bigger than any of us. All my husband's
good works, and it's this one crucifixion
he'll be remembered for.

In dreams most nights I see fields
of grain--the way we Romans plant--
the purple vetch among the weeds.

I don't know why, oh, I don't know why
I should feel this glad in the economy
of a Hebrew God.

Elvis and Godiva

These are my names for them,
because he impersonated "The King" when
first he came to town.
She wends her way with flowing hair,
naked in her difference:
her body curls painfully into itself--
a question mark of a woman beside
an exclamation point of a man.
Winter and summer, I see them confirm,
step by step, the streets of town,
wade silently, slowly through our curiosity,
propel a shopping cart of clothes and plastic bags.

They ask nothing of me,
yet I am disturbed, un-homed
by their dereliction of the material,
by their undefined devotion to each other.

Pajama-panted prophet, tell us:
What is it, really, between two people?
Hand in his, are you lovers?
Or are you a premonition--
setting us a poignant itinerary
through the rubble of
stock market and real estate and
tumbling of the world we
once built of dreams?

Your Door

My friend Barbara's house was cream with blue trim and PINK doors.  That's the kind of lady she was.

I am walking down the street 

between your house

and mine towards the bay.

I am trying to comprehend

the idea--as if 

anyone could--

that suddenly your address

has changed to 

Nowhere on Earth.  I notice

the sky.  After the storm, it is

blue and yellow and yes,

undeniably pink--

pink, pink all over, as if

the heavens have 

painted your new door

just for you,

and it's as big

as your benevolent and entirely

unconventional heart.

Island in Spring

Sun's up early.
Slat-backed chairs lean away from the bay
and wait for straw-hatted visitors
to hunker with books the way
gulls ensconce on rocks by the shore.
Upstairs in the inn
a teenage housekeeper is already at it--
briskly strips beds, vacuums floors,
snickers to her boyfriend on her cell.

Winter gripped this island hard.
In retaliation flowers uprise.
Starry clematis rocket ramparts,
and apple blossoms mass on wind-twisted limbs.
Lupines and buttercups grasp, splash violet and lemon
over steel gray rock and marsh meadow.
Wherever lilacs do not bloom, natives plant.
The morning ferry carried flats of purple petunias.

Later, fog erases the bay.
A suggestion of a house inhabits a yard
like a ghost with pockets full of stark memories.

Hope Springs

Don't we always long to do the perennial dance of the seasons? Maybe it's even more important to revisit the places we have loved as we sense our lives closing.

These two purple afternoon shadows
take time to cross the restaurant floor.
The woman, frayed, disheveled,
peers through sea glass above a tired shawl.
He bends and bobs like a dandelion ready to blow.
She is tethered to her partner by years
and plastic tubing from the tank she bears.
He steps and halts, steps and halts, steps and halts.
They waltz the distance to their table
overlooking the harbor.

"I thought you had him leashed," I tease carefully.
"I do," she says, "or maybe he has me."
He chortles, chokes, then rests his head.

"We've come here every year," she confesses,
"April and October.
I didn't have the courage last fall,
but it's April...."

Follow the Lie

Okay. So maybe I'm jaded these days.

Follow it back in history
over aprons and cake mixes
and blue-eyed baby dolls,
and nights spent in factories
and in smoky bars
through narrow berths in stinking holds
or lofty staterooms above,
to cramped cottages
or up the castle stairs
in and out of beds with bolsters
or simply bracken,
past casks of wine
and gold coin of every realm.
See the lifting of a veil.
Hear the whisper,
Trust me.
Trace it all the way back
to the promise of a missing rib
and see the unfolding
of all broken hearts.

Imrama for Bruce

So often my poems are for family or friends who have died.  Is this my task--to memorialize?  This one is for a dear friend from Pinebrook days and was written after studying the myths of Celtic adventure/spiritual journeys.

There is never a good death, though some
may make a crossing smooth.
As paper burns, the body shrivels: life leaves.
Thousands die every day.
Imagine the sound of compounded mourning.
Yet blessed the one who flies
on drafts of tears, prayer-borne,
trusted into Love's center,
who leaves behind a wake of laughter
and faith-arrows aimed straight.

Death's sting is in the cup
we do not fill with tea.

Hush now.  We will be soothed
with words of glory land, and we will
strike our oars like the brave men of Bran,
Brendan and Maeldune
and sail forth on life's sea to find
our companion, all shining,
waiting for us on the distant shore.

Nearer to What I Fear

for Barbara Marshall  (1941-2006)

Too sugary--you call me Sweetie--
but here we are, broken ribs
and babysitting your new grandson.
As your bones knit we spend hours
purling the separate sleeves of our stories
to our common new lives in Maine.

The first night you come to dinner
I want to use the dishwasher,
but you fondle the plates with a dish towel.
It's the least I can do, you say. At home
my meals are in front of the refrigerator.

You wipe a plate.  Sweetie, you say,
you're a writer.
Write about what you fear.
Take off your counselor's hat, Barb.
I just want you for a friend.

            The pinks and blues and the yellows--
          hot colors and a dash of the wild!
          Spiked hair of a pixie and mischievous grin
          covering deep-seated people-wisdom.
          Your dogs you treat like your babies.
          Baby chortles with joy.
          Sons shine like the stars they are
          in your sky.
          Friendships fill a hundred lifetimes;
          Visits of pain and loneliness and
          T.V. news fill the space in your bed,
          but shoots of forgiveness begin to show.
          Homecoming starts to grow.
                                                           Oh, my friend.

I am afraid, you say on Wednesday night.
A different pain.  What if I die alone?
You're not going to die!
On Friday you say, "I feel great!"
On Sunday--
          heartbroken, misguided soothsayer, I.



       

Sunset Over Belfast

"The sun sets in the cold without friends..." (W.S. Merwin, Dusk in Winter)

Merwin's sun sets friendless, reproachless,
and yet tonight the sun lingered,
loathe to leave the stage.
It blushed the belly of each witnessing cloud,
like the touch of a grand dame
on a courtier's cheek as she exits.
It seemed intent on defining once, for all,
the color gold by trailing
miles and miles of purple complement.

I Married the Man from Pittsburgh

This was a birthday gift to Neil one year.

I never held you but I thought of the devil
with two blue eyes and tongue of honeyed gold.
I saw the rise of industry in those eyes--
cloudless blue and steel and plate glass reaching for the sky.
Three Rivers ran through me
every time we joined. Floating Swann on Sundays,
and I was hit by the echo of the crack of Roberto's bat
on the ball, and you were always   always
                                                                  on   the   ball.

Suit and tie and briefcase--dressed
for success--except you chewed your nails.
You took half your worry out on those fingertips,
but when you fingered me
I felt like hot, smoky notes thumped from a bass
in the corner of a darkened bar.
You were not musical, but you played me, Ace,
and daylight broke through stained glass
in the little church on Fourth and Broad.

Nights, we played Fleetwood Mac so loudly
the neighbors knocked.
The streets of town overflowed with snow,
and everywhere    everywhere
                                               falling laughter.

To Honor Eddie Klump

A small, bent man accompanied
my elderly father to our Easter dinner.
Shy, ashen-faced, crook-legged,
he was beyond our attempts
to imagine him a soldier
in the khaki of WWII with
gun clutched to shoulder,
other arm swinging free.
He rushed an enemy turret?
No, surely not this pale man in paler suit.
Fifty years ago time in a German
prison camp took the color
from his life and earned him
a purple heart for bravery and pain.
Here, some Sunday School grace:
Mother gone, my father
adopted this stray and ancient waif,
and bequeathed him to my husband's care
and a home in the V.A. hospital.

We honor those who "gave their all,"
but what about those
whose all was taken?  All, that is, but a loose
thread of future unwinding into days
of borrowed families; Sunday services;
playing cards with other vets; emptying mind
into the vacuum of t.v. and
a drink with a consoling woman.
No wife to share his painful bed.
No children to laugh him into
the day after tomorrow.

Rest now, Soldier.
In the 60 years since that prison
door opened for you,
you have lived only for the glory of
this moment--
to lay beside your brothers
in Arlington's rows of white.

Vigils

What do these
watching angels want
whose wingtips brush my skin?
In darkness sleeping bones
can feel their stare, but though love itself
unlock their tongues, whispered
glossalalial glorias are all I'd hear.
What would they say,
were not the lost language of Eden involved?

Small hours,
small mind.
Tawdry life that's more turned pages
than lived.
Yet I do not feel accused
by them, but by what writhes
to rise through wrinkled skin,
to stand with them beyond our dying stars,
beyond their mute desire.

The Witches of Belfast

I think I know where the witches live
in my town.  In my town I'm sure they dwell
          where lintels capture shooting stars;
          where contented cats sleep on window sills;
          where a gable flies an angel.

You can tell their homes by the gardens.
In gardens wild and bright you can see
          profusion of sage and bee balm,
          chicory, sunflowers, marguerite,
          bleeding hearts at the very least.

Witch-homes may not be tidy
but often they are small.  Small and overflowing
          with painted colors, all broken and chipped,
          and cracked plates under flower pots,
          and sea glass and cookies in jars.

The residents of a witch-house fly
but not usually in the air, though in trembling air
           the butterflies banner between blooms;
           feeders magnetize finches and doves,
           and for all of them witches care.

Magic rises from rooftops
in the misty, morning air.  In the morning air floats
          breathfuls of baking bread,
          laughter of children's surprise
          the quiet as poems arrive.

Some witches don't own their magic
in my town. In my town they are unaware
          of mysterious powers within.
          They sing and paint, plant and create,
          suffer broken hearts--
          but they live whole-heartedly.

For James Joseph

It's been a while.  Friends came to Maine. Neil came to work with me on the house. Eric joined us for the weekend's work and enjoyment of the gorgeous weather of this last week--clouds with their stuffings coming out; heaven-blue skies; temps in the 70's with breezes from the east holding the scent of ocean that made me sigh. Now I have cleaning and laundry to do.  That's the best impetus for me to work on writing. So back to the poems.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Had it been India, we would have
burned your body on a funeral pyre
sun-up to sundown, staying with you,
turning the bones until all are ash.
All day we would have wept, prayed,
chanted together for your soul's safe journey.

But this is mainstream America.
No oparri here to sing your life and mourn,
to flesh out the man we see in the coffin.
We need collected stories
of memories and explanation--
why your hair is flecked with gray
and you dead at twenty-nine.

Here in the funeral parlor
no outward expression but seeping tears,
no scattering of petals nor paintings.
We aunties and uncles
are not the Indian mourners who will
stay with the family, cleaning,
cooking, comforting, playing dice
in between their shifts.
Your mother was dead ten years ago
on the same day you left us.
Your girlfriend wasn't invited
because of family politics.
The solicitous funeral director
funnels our grief
into cans of acceptable behavior.

You were the known child but
the unknown man, Jay,
caught in an irresistible drain of drugs.
You are the story unfinished, the sentence
ending irrationally with a colon:

Therapy

If there were to be healing,
no seminal conversation would do.
(The counselor listens, places frames
around my tears and offers tissues.)

If there were to be healing
it would take strong
searchlights of poetry
to find evidence of
where the spirit went
or the source of a steady drip
of sacramental words
from the roof of my life.

Crone

I think this poem was born of beginning to see the crumbling center of my marriage. There were so many things that remained buried for so long between us.  I would go to bed thinking things would be all right, but wake in the wee hours to knowing something was really wrong. (And I don't usually swear at all.) 

Why do I never dream you faithful?
I have been dreaming women's dreams
      pomegranates, those membranous caverns of red seed;
      light flooding geraniums on my mother's windowsills;
      a woman giving birth to the world.
I wake to football, borders, bombs.
      I can say, "fuck."
I am married to what I need,
though our secret failures
curl around and take me from behind:
      What we have left unsaid
      prods me urgently at four a.m.

The Keeper

for Stephanie Gail, Sister-Mother

Though howling wind rushes
round these old stone walls
and through her thumping heart,
The Keeper of the Candles sees
which ones have been blown out
and which still burn.
In her mountain
hermitage she mothers
the memories of orphans of fate,
while she melts tallow
from the black-wicked stubs.
The wax has scarred her arms and hands,
but she is faithful
to her tender watch and
lights flames with sacred simplicity
before the gray altars of times past
and green kingdom-come.
She re-peoples the world
with yesterday's children
and remembered stories,
filling these crypt-like spaces
in our lives
with light and song.