Walking across the parking lot
he heard her say to her friend,
“Oh no, they took the car cover
off and just left it there.”
“Want some help picking it up?”
“Thanks. There won’t be any
rattlesnakes under it will there?”
“Where are you from?”
“Milwaukee.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three weeks.”
He could have kidded her a bit,
but said, “I think we are pretty
safe.”
Her friend called out, “Watch
out for spiders.”
“Or scorpions,” he thought of
saying — like a kid in sixth
grade would have —
but he didn’t.

She reflects on the Valley of
the Sun’s winter marches
for rights — immigrants, LGBTs,
women.

She was taught about heaven
and gold and a precious gem

in the literal, biblical view,
but that way is no longer new.

It’s all right here, right
now —
heaven, empyrean,
eternity — that’s how —

when she heard again
The Day the Music Died,
and she thought and cried,
about Buddy Holly, the Big
Bopper and Richie Valens
all who fell out of the sky

and

softly, sweetly, Holly sang:

Sometimes we’ll sigh,
sometimes we’ll cry
and we’ll know why
just you and I
know true love ways,

and

Well, that ‘ill be the day,
eh, eh, that I die,

and my, oh, my,
why aren’t there
protest songs today?
Buddy, Richie and the Bopper,
given things as they are today,
may have written and sung some
after “silly love songs”
if they had not gone away —
after La Bamba and Chantilly Lace —
and that very day, the day
the music died,
but she keeps marching and
singing in protest
while she knows
the poignancy of
true love ways
and hopes for the songs
that will inspire all
along the way.

The new Veep, old, forked-tongue Mike
claiming never to be alone with a woman other than his wife,
hooked his political wagon to a falling star
in hopes that he could break loose and travel far.
The only problem for the Veep
is that he, too, is in trouble a deep heap.
The next problem then, if the Veep goes down
is that we will be left with the House’s main clown —
Paul Ryan, for legislation dead on arrival
is dubbed the Irish Undertaker,
then will be the next presidential news faker.
The Lord of Hosts once asked if there
were just one honest Holy Land man.
Well, we can declare, “Certainly not in this unholy GOP land.”
Like the guaranteed result of a good enema, alas,
hopefully, this abomination of an administration will soon pass.
Like dominoes — all three fall one right after another —
we can only hope
and this is no April Fool’s joke.