Flying home from Seattle,
A man behind me mentions
The 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
I turn to see if it is you. A crazy thought.
Why would you be here?
Fifteen years since I heard your voice.
Still, I recall its timbre.
When you talked it sounded as if
You had a mouthful of stones.

I’ve read that visual memories
are easier to recall than words,
so when I can’t remember the name
of the tree by the garden hedge
white blossoms in springtime,
I think of our dog, Finn, basking
beneath it, long ears stroking the earth,
know it is a dogwood tree.

In my early, disruptive thirties,
I wondered through
An aimless, broken land,
With a slew of past sins as my guide.

Along my travels,
I found a temple made of marble stone
Standing in the middle of nowhere.

Waking at 6:00 am, she would sit all day on a wooden stool,
listening to country music on a radio.
Coffee gave her the neuralgia along her nose, so she gave it up years ago,
drank hot water from McDonald’s Styrofoam cups.

Only bone and sinew, papery, thin skin,
her gnarled hands could crush
plants or animals or a small child.

I walk back from intensive care,
automatically shuffle for solitaire
and report the numbers to siblings
as I try to deal:
pressure urine cc’s and temp,
peeling off the first three cards
and nothing changing.

At the aptly named Jackson Theater
when you were twelve
you saw John Wayne’s visually ambitious
gloriously fictitious
version of The Alamo
— yet another story already told to you through TV
— and so of course yet another lie.

Sleepless cities hate shutting down, but also,
Distancing protocols dismantle congregations in dozy towns.
Trauma afflicts the already jobless.
New York nights avoid turning dark & idle,
Yet theatres close-down & spotlights shut-off,
Covid has proven that seductive consumptions are not worth the cough.