“How does one with no boots
pull himself up by his bootstraps?”
“Why teach someone to fish
then deny them access to the lake?”
I just read that the virus is mutating, anti-vaxxers are joining other unsavory elements to protest public health measures, the president doesn’t see the need for mass testing but is now getting tested daily…
I have lingered too long on the intricacies of bark and root,
of trees as leap into the inverted bowl of a sky I cannot lick,
named comets and coined mythologies while the masters
of commerce discussed business in the other room.
It is late-April 2003 and I’m well enough to bathe. Mom draws
the bath, peels off clothes and bandages. A month of sweat and blood
disappears in eddies of soap and steam. Civilians cower in fear—
I confess to undemocratic meditations:
If Bin Laden had sought instead
to save the world,
what would he have hijacked?
The dishwasher hums and the laundry’s put away.
Clean sheets, clean cutlery. A puddle of dust
on the hardwood, but the dog is on my lap
and a drowsy rain perfumes the house.
One can almost forget the future
in the glow of a Pacific sunset,
forget how quickly placid waves turn brutal,
that waters are stubborn as facts, immune to prayer
One may well ask what good standing here.
How does reason answer to madness?
A hot shower can erase the cold but not
the shiver. Is it not better to fast than go hungry?
I want to rest on the shore
until the urchins break skin
and the salt seeps in.
To secure a future we must understand
The difference between terror and fear.
Walk into a room and hear a snake’s sudden hiss,
See it squirming in a dark corner, two reptilian eyes
Piercing darkness like fangs in search of your