Earth
rotating
in orbit round its star the sun

braked
like a subway train
when
for one unrecoverable second
the conductor
rounding the bend
sights
a woman or man or child
fallen on the track.

On that day, Earth
shuddered
into backward spiral
toward non-being into no time.

Can human fists
grasp
some cosmic lever
force back
the wheel

reverse
sudden
counter-evolutionary spin

before the tremors of our hands
and dizzying brains
no longer
know day from night?

Wary of venturing out,
I’m heartened to hear three cougars–
As aware of our presence as we’re oblivious of theirs–
Stroll the streets of Boulder,

And all those years ago
The old steps from our porch
Hauled into the orchard for future discard,
A perfect place for a young cougar
To leap atop and stretch out long and orange,
The wide space twixt its ears and extra-long tail odd, but catlike,
At least that’s what my mother thought
When she carried me out to see the regal cat,
Calling Kitty, Kitty.
And my father, horrified to learn of it
When he came home,
As he remembered in the night the screams
He took for a screech owl so didn’t mention.
That small misstep made her the butt of jokes in our logging town,
“The teacher who didn’t know a cougar when she saw one.”

So today, as cougars venture out in Boulder’s empty streets,
I applaud their courage
And my mother’s–for teaching on for decades,
Past an error she refused to let define her.

How much we want what is known—
the familiar cup of coffee early before
any other thing can set us off;
the very pen we pick up to write
in the pages we know so well;
the warm words that come to mind—
you know, how the mind will
come up with a story for what
is happening even before we
take it all in, then our story
becomes the shadow or shape
even though it may be something
else entirely come to pass,
so what we want to call a new
normal may never be either
but how would we know?

I felt the folds
of fire through my body,

as I heard on CNN,
while sipping my morning coffee,

that I had been designated
by the Centers for Disease Control

one of the vulnerables:
those of a certain age

with pre-existing conditions
who, because of these factors,

would not receive scarce resources
in this time of pandemic.

In the calculus of data,
I was dead.

Dead before the fever.
Dead without the cough.

Dead, standing in the kitchen,
washing my hands.

Then a doctor reported
there were no tests.

There were no vaccines,
There were no medications.

And what should I do now that I’m dead?
I’ll decide after I dry my hands.

In these first months of plague the wisteria bloomed,
its fragrance glorifying every breath,
not clinging to the fence as planned, but
spreading tall and wide into the olive tree
tendrils clinging tight to branches, then venturing
out among the wild coyote bushes,
snaking along the ground toward the roses.
Toward the gate.

Dawn or sunset, Monet’s haystacks glow, cast shadows.
A friend’s death casts unexpected light, few shadows.

A cloud so low it rested on my car top
absorbed light, blocked shadows.

Six blackbirds equidistant on a power line.
On the sidewalk below, six nearly equidistant shadows.

In the museum of broken relationships
ghosts of what was toy with remaining shadows.

Droplets in foggy mist settle on a windshield.
Dry, they leave dust-dot shadows.

Coronavirus arrives, visits selected guests.
If they’re lucky, it leaves only shadows.

In separate rooms, earphones in place, musicians play together,
perform a symphony that casts light, lifts shadows.

world of masks, panic ….. distance from,
sweating from a fire in the mind