By Deborah Landau
A breath leaves the body, and wishes it could return maybe,
the news to the left and right rich with failure, terror, dither,
the bloated moon in constant charge of us like vapor—
and this did frame our constituency, even in our cozy homes
even in a painless state on the downriver, oh oblivion—
sipping champagne as another night brings forth its big dancing plan
its damage.
I had a thought but it turned autumn, turned cold.
I had a body, unwearied, vital, despite the funeral in everything—
ample with bodies, covered in graves and gardens, potholes and water,
an ardent river we walked together, a wine and rising breeze.
Much trouble at hand, yet the lilies still.
That summer we sat with our backs to the street, letting time pass—
lying all afternoon in the grass as if green and insect were the world.
I am, I am, and you are, you are, we wrote, until the paper seemed a
tree again
and we walked beneath it greener and unsullied afresh.
Massive powers that be, what will be?
We smoke our pipes to forget you
& mildly now we bide our time
the violence and real cities under siege,
but also filled this morning
with coffee drinkers, office workers, taxi drivers, boys on bikes.
Golden we were in the moment of conception,
and alive, as if we always would be.
--------
Friday dawned very rainy but turned into a humid yet cool afternoon that was quite lovely. I got to see my father very briefly -- I had bagels for him, he had Beyond Burgers for me -- and my oldest friend for less happy reasons, since her uncle had died of coronavirus and she wanted to use my USB webcam so that her aunt could join a virtual memorial service and sit shiva via Zoom. She brought sourdough starter that has risen a great deal more this evening than our sourdough starter, though the latter made good pizza dough crust when we divided it to feed it and I got to knead it, which is very good for working out the fingers!
We had delicious pesto pizza with that crust before and evening of catch-up TV: Supergirl's season finale, which was mostly good because of the SuperCorp love, and The 100's season premiere, which was pretty good though I will never not miss Marcus and Abby, and Billions, in which Axe is now a much bigger dick than Chuck and I'm only watching in the hope someone else takes them all down. I scanned late 1970s trips to Disney World and Barbados today, so you may get to see those soon, but in the meantime here are some of the squirrels and chipmunks who have been visiting our deck while we've been at home:
No comments:
Post a Comment