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“Dolly Parton says she is singing for everybody. I am trying to translate for everybody.”

2021

In early February, winter gray,
Stretching sky high from the early morning earth,
Begins again, slowly, to melt away.
Slowly, invisibly almost. Too slight
A pale to promise sun, much less rebirth.
I can’t this instant help but see the light.

Not light so much as edges coming clear;
Not clear at all, thick mist obscures the dawn.
Streetlights unlit, buildings poised to appear,
Low storefronts and a tall brick bank—I see
Faint outlines on the brink of being gone,
Less with my eyes than with my memory.

One early spring in Illinois,
startled by the foreign sight
of pelicans upon dark water,
we stopped to stare, my mother
and I, at such ungainly awkward
birds—the males with their red-
knobbed bills, flat drooping sacks
of wrinkled skin—watching as
they took to flight, laborious,
a clumsy sight, until, airborne,
they were transformed.

Watching the destruction of the world we were warned was coming is a staple of American entertainment.

A tale of beauty, religion, and how easy it is to exploit them

She was waiting in mask and gloves
for the next in line 
in a trailer at the COVID testing site,
her rhinestone sandals not visible
but I knew her
by the soft curve of her shoulder
and called her name.

She said as she swabbed
the inside of my nose,
my eyes tearing up,
It’s a shame we can’t hug.

As we did when she came
to lift and wipe and wash
my husband in his prison body,
sometimes bringing her polite boy
who slept on the couch in his clothes.