Summer Musings

No art festival this year,

no outdoor concerts, parties, soiree’s.

Bars are barely open, then close again…

Covid recedes, then spikes with ferocity.

This is going to be one miserable year,

and there is no guarantee about the next either.

People can only stand so much time isolated,

reclused with only a computer or phone.

Yet somehow humanity survived this before,

in 1919, and in earlier times too.

We emerged with better hygiene and medicine.

Perhaps this will happen once again.

It is just getting through it,

the long rough road intervening.

We sense that we will come through this,

just how much collateral damage will there be?

Time will tell,

we go through hell;

at the other end

everything will be swell.

Messiah Confabulations

When that stranger whispers in our ear,

promising to vanish all our doubt and fear,

how do we determine what is real,

what thought returned that he did steal?

Many magicians can read us, dazzle our minds

with some obvious facts read between the lines.

Suddenly we submit and yield to a new Him,

thinking all our concerns will but grow dim.

A new solution can arise to gullibility,

So obvious it escapes us in entirety.

There’s no supernatural beings out there,

no magical gods to ease all of our cares.

Just us humans, recently down from the trees,

stalking the Serengeti for a meal in the weeds.

Like always we have to make our own paradises,

whether in barren desert lands or ocean cliffsides.

Now together we have created vast cities,

lofted space telescopes to view distant entities.

Nothing can stop our determined human tribe

from visiting the stars, except maybe genocide.

If you have nothing to do

Come on over and let’s snuggle up together,

we can warm winter blues out of our bones.

Chat about nothing, catch up on everything.

Better to have company on this gloomy day.

If you are not busy, otherwise occupied,

why not join me, take a break from society?

We can sooth each others pain, ease the worries;

life’s path goes easier with a close companion.

But then again we all have plans laid in

long before, the way people must these days.

So perhaps you will chose not to, and

I will have to be satisfied with your memory.

There are other people, events, goings-on

that will satisfy most of my remaining longings.

But that little crevice, the nook labeled “you”

will just have to sit empty, and I’ll do my best

to overlook that tender gap

left in a small part of my being.

Hot Summer Days

The sun is hot in June,

a good day to seek out the water.

Cool rivers enrapture and sooth,

civil strife and pandemics won’t matter…

Shuck street clothes and anxieties,

cast off inhibitions and wade right in.

Splash and giggle and caper around,

feel joys buried for too many years.

Angry crowds bust out windows,

loot stores and smash out doors.

Teargas and rubber bullets are fired,

Screams of rage and panic combine.

“I Can’t Breathe! Black Lives Matter!”

Refrain echoes and reverberates around

an entire nation – racism no longer supine.

Needles of shame penetrate far and wide.

But today is a day to forget,

time to escape it all to a hidden river,

shucking the shame and feeling renewal.

Today the water, wind and warmth,

Tomorrow, the weight of the world.

Good luck to us all.