I’ve paid for cable over 30 years,
and all my life I used a landline phone.
Regarding Comcast Internet, it nears
about as long as cable in my home.
It’s primitive, I hear, but many peers
are likewise habit- and nostalgia-prone.
My son stepped up and in, with modern gear,
and took the cumbersome away from here.
The question was – What quantity of you
is water? I assumed that it was much.
But 61%? Turns out it’s true,
of humans fully grown. A baby’s such
a budding creature, full of fluid, new,
perfection-plump and cushiony to touch,
she may be liquid 96%.
(I overspoke, but you know what I meant).
I didn’t feel particularly stressed
when I arrived. The toddler was asleep,
the house was neat, the other grownup dressed
and leaving on an errand. I read deep
and drank cold water – of a sudden blessed
with quiet solitude. I had a sweep
clear out my roster and I realized this –
a respite well-deserved engenders bliss.
Of course you’re not to blame for my new cold.
Apology’s unnecessary now.
There’s rhinovirus prevalent as mold
in darksome damp, and nobody knows how
or why or when our bodies will succumb.
You’re not responsible, but if you say
“I’m sorry” with a sympathetic tongue
I’ll thank you for concern, and love’s display.
I felt fantastic yesterday, as soon
as I returned from twenty hours away.
I walked into my place at nearly noon,
unpacked, and spent the latter part of day
at Mom’s to lunch with several cousins missed
for more years than we meant. My appetite
received good food, my face was warmly kissed,
and for some hours everything felt right.
And even in the evening, till I slept
at 1 a.m., in front of my TV,
I felt just fine. But overnight what crept
on me is not fun symptomatically –
Is this a cold? Too often feeling well
is like an omen of an illness spell…
Somebody liked a poem of mine today.
It sounded unfamiliar. I reviewed.
I posted it some weeks ago, but they
approved it now. I’m grateful but subdued.
I don’t recall the stanza, though it’s mine;
I recognize the style, recollect
the thoughts I nursed composing every line,
but I forgot its syntax and aspect.
Perhaps I’ve penned too many poems to date.
I started daily work from house arrest,
when virus made pandemic made me wait
inside. I figured then some weeks at best
(for “quarantine” has 40 as its base) –
but it and I continued on apace.
The fact is, that I’m quick to recognize
in others faults I know myself to own.
I watch you now observe disorganized
behavior in your partner, but you’re known
for such yourself. Does that not make some sense?
You focus on another’s needless course
most weekdays. And how ready his defense.
(Self-justifying is your first resource.)
You’ve known your spouse for years, but you’re not close
enough to open up and clearly see.
Your coworker’s the soul you diagnose.
It shouldn’t feel like any mystery
that traits you see in him and now disdain
are clues to what goes on inside your brain.
“Let me be frank,” our father used to state.
Or “I’ll be frank with you.” We smile/groaned.
For though a candid man, his natal fate
was carrying the word as name. Intoned
right after that was when he often taught
us how to care for goods, to be precise
with words: requests, instructions. We all sought
good data, power, much of his advice.
We took his words to heart and grew like him,
with care for all equipment, boxes kept.
For order we know every synonym.
We later tried to make our mates adept,
but reaped the tempest with our homely wind,
our father harshly mocked, ourselves chagrined.
In 1854, conditions met
low expectation. Civic health was poor.
The gutters flooded filth and crime was debt,
in 1854.
Most lives were hard, with rats enjoying more
than peasants starved and stunted, people fret
with grief and squalor, thirsty, dirty, sore.
My tactic now is trying to forget
the present, future dashed, the end in store.
That’s why I’m reading all these stories set
in 1854.
I didn’t suffer a calamity –
a canceled train one way, and coming back,
computers down and signs nowhere to see,
while overnight my sleep was out of whack.
I witnessed toddler grief, frustrated glee,
and tired parents’ stamina too slack.
I made it home. I stripped though I was clean,
and stepped into a bath I bombed with green.
Cutterpub 