It has been like a million years since I have posted on this site for you. That is about to change. I also feel I have been in quarantine for a million years. But it feels okay, not lonely, just contemplative. Here is a poem about living in quarantine at Ruckle Road:

Ruckle Road Quarantine

My street is always deserted, that’s nothing new
what is empty is my table; too early for flowers
too dangerous for friends.
 
Yet, my kitchen, this sanctuary where I linger
to find my flavor of quiet-solitude brims
with the aroma of yeast and honey.
 
I turn the sticky dough and it clings to my fingers
warm and familiar, so much like the skin
of the grandkids, I long to touch.
 
Soon my kitchen will brim with English muffins
that I will freeze for a time where flowers
bloom and wine will flow again in company

I like to play with words and words into verses and verses into poems. Who doesn’t? Sometimes a poem is important and moves the moral narrative forward to a better place. These are the poems I love to read and find. But sometimes I like to write poems just for kicks. So here is a poem that is not an important poem, nor a particularly good poem. But I hope it makes you smile. This poem is dedicated to my friend, or to you,  on a day whose ‘wasband’ gave her an unacceptable word assault. (You know who you are).
 
The disgruntled wife
His words spewed from his mouth
like an angry cartoon.
She could see them hitting his carpet
capunk! capunk,! anvils on his floor.
she did the only sensible
thing to do at times like these
she collapsed his mandibles
then squeezed his eyeballs into one
an insufficient cyclops
organs tissues then cells
turned to a marbled ball of blood
and skin    she crawled onto those spaces
his molecules and atoms next
collapsed with no space
their galactic distances condensed
without their air       he was so small
smaller than a mote of dust
satisfied the disgruntled wife
began to clean HER  house
but she could not see him
so she hoovered him by accident
his ugly words no longer
on Her carpet.

These long days are an invitation to sit by a pond and contemplate nature. In my pond there is a city on legs, and here is a poem on those thoughts.
 
 
Rings upon rings
 
as if a torrent of rain
wants to drown this pond.
 
—Get close and see.
 
These ripples, not of rain,
but water skippers!
 
A city on legs
balanced on the skin of water.
 
In a game, or maybe a war,
of meet and retreat.
 
The smaller ones race
for a brief connection,
 
in a second secrets are shared
new circles inflate, shimmer
 
and fracture the calm
of a cloudy day
 
distort the mirror of trees
a vibration of braches
 
making the summer dance,
this is the hallucinogenic power
 
of waking on water.

I have been thinking a lot about my father lately. Maybe is because of Father’s Day, maybe because of the transient nature of our existence in this short-lived planet. Regardless of the reason, reading Sandeep Jauhar’s book ‘Heart A History,’ inspired this new poem. I hope you will enjoy it.

The organ as a heart
 
I want to see the depths
of my father’s heart,
the confusion
of failed arteries,
the atrophy
of muscle
from a life filled
with the spoils of regret.
 
I know it is just a pump,
no ‘virtue spirits’ there,
 
still, I struggle
to hold on to Galen’s view,
and pretend to know my father cared for me
in the caverns of those now-empty chambers.
I want to walk in its darkness
hold the softness of those walls,
to find its sentiments,
as flawed as the man that carried it.