The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town.
Eleanor H. Porter

( american windows and other psychoses )

i remember the cardboard house on the wrong side of the train tracks- perennially in twilight. screened windows shut, curtains drawn on august mornings.

how many layers does it take for you to feel safe

from the outside air

how many fluorescent bulbs for you to feel free

how many guns

we turned the light on to have breakfast. that house never knew breezes, or sunlight.

this saturday night i want to play music from my window — no balcony here. but there are screens, promptly shut if i throw them open to air out the room — the conditioning to fear starts with the white picket fence. the death of beauty with these factory sliding panes, the jail crank, the midwest faux wood panel fan cum light fixture, driveways. You can take the girl out of suburbia but

the great outdoors- a nation of weekend warriors

just not sunlight and breeze in the house

We keep flies away back home, we don’t shut ourselves
in

they don’t like balconies too close

to their neighbors either.

~intermission~ suspend judgement~

I walk the earth, the blades of grass

Tender — my instep sinks, my knees appreciate

We are made of the selfsame matter

You and I

are too

The goddess says,

right before Child’s Pose

“Breathe three-dimensionally”.

This is the global pause.

The “Great Pause” you have been waiting for.

The Slowing Down.

Here. is. your. chance.

The earth holding her breath,

so that you could learn yours.

So that “your soul could catch up

with your body.”

Like the building waiting for the sale,

the lease renewal.

We are all waiting to exhale.

Carla says there are two magic words:

Right.

Now.

I keep my phone in a leather holster :

it is the gun that kills

this moment.

That takes me away from the beauty

of this Now — this silence.

This moment calls for quiet acts.

The solemn going in.

It is a mourning time too, not just a collective coming together ( are we coming together or coming apart? The jury’s still in.)

It is a requiem for The Dream

for those who thought themselves

Untouchable, invincible, immune.

He said he never saw empty shelves in his

forty-six years.

Afterword 

If we could only put poetry

ahead of tidying up

ahead of our lists, even now that we are

home bound

ahead of laundry

I hear my neighbors laugh outside for the first time in 11 years.

The Italian nurse says she works with the same people day and night fighting this war, but she can’t even hug them.

“I haven’t seen their smiles in so long I don’t remember them, their faces before these mask”.

Still the body to still the mind

Only meditation is “like meditation”.

This is the year where everything gets canceled.

Except love

Except time, her hindsight gifts.

The padded silence.

Except our being naked as people, as countries.

Those who lose themselves in crowds in parties in bars now, finally, face themselves. Or not.

If you’ve been saving something for a special occasion:

Well, you are the occasion —

says my art teacher.

This is the time to

Write with fountain pens

on expensive paper

 imported ink.

She taught me to work in silence

So I could hear myself.

I told her about wells, not puddles.

This is the time to burn the incense, aromatherapy of supreme self-care

Light all the candles in all the churches of Italy

( the priest holds mass in front of the photos of the parishioners – and there is police tape on street benches, they are “closed”- we have crossed into the absurd)

I forgot to tell him

In my dream I was on the rooftop of a train

Flying between the skyscrapers of New York

I was exhilarated

In my dream I was riding a motorcycle, free

I forgot to tell him

New York is the beating heart of this country.

[This post and poem were written in March 2020 and only edited today, May 26.]