When I was in high school, my dad put together 
the components of a stereo and we put it in 
what had been my room but I moved into my 

sister’s larger bedroom after she married.
It would be the listening den. He also bought 
boxes of Readers’ Digest 78 rpm records of 

classical music with short biographies (with 
photos or drawings) of the composers. After 
school I would listen and listen and read 

and read about the composers until I was 
pretty good at identifying the pieces of 
music. It served me very well in my college

music appreciation class. Years and years 
and years went by and I always loved listen-
ing to classical music and now as I listen 

to 90.3, the regional classical music station, 
a familiar piece of music will start and I 
will say, “Oh, come on. What the hell is that?”

The tree seems hard, bark and all,
in comparison to a human body,
but if the tree is alive, it is warm
and soft in comparison to a dead
tree or a dead human. Living trees
are huggable, living humans are
huggable. Dead trees are good for
lumber and hard, beautiful bowls
on countertops. Dead humans
make ashes placed in beautiful,
shiny, hardwood bowls on fire-
place mantels.

My little dog Happy and I skirted along the 
edge of the lake on our way through the field. 
We crossed the fence and began our journey 
westward. In front of us was a really big 
bull casually munching the grass. He was 
resplendent; so big and yet so gentle. He
stood by himself. Happy and I were entranced
wanting nothing more than to hug and pet
the bull showing we are one with our nature 
brother. We took one more step in the bull’s 
direction and he charged and we ran eastward. 
I jumped the fence; Happy crawled under and 
we both fell into the lake and immediately 
started looking for cottonmouths, copperheads 
and swamp rattlers.

The scientist said it was a slaughter,
     not like the image of a slaughter —
          
          some gruesome battle with swords
slashing and hammers crushing
     and guts gushing all over what had
          
          been a field of corn. Or what use to 
take place in the old Chicago Stock 
     Yards on a daily basis. No, this
          
          slaughter happened under the
the most sanitary of conditions
     in hospitals all over the land, places
          
          designed to keep people alive
but the patients were dropping like
     flies, like what eventually would
          
          happen to the fly that settled into
the Veep’s white coif, but a slaughter
     nevertheless, initiated and carried
           
          out by the one who was entrusted
with the privilege and responsibility
     to protect the people — yes, him, The                                                                                                                                                                                      

          Slaughterer.  And now he wants his 
political enemies jailed. That would 
     make him The Jailer, too. That's our 
          
          virus infected, Super Spreader, Jailer, 
Slaughterer. By January 20, there
     will be more labels, if we are still
          
          around to label him anymore.                                                                                                                                                          

Her ashes were tossed to the sea.
Those ashes found their way into aquatic life
some of which rolled up the sand onto the beach
— vegetation, turtles burying eggs.
Another’s ashes were tossed to the sands.
Those ashes found their way into dune life —
trees — beech, maple, oak — decorative grasses.
A third person’s ashes joined in the burials.
Some of those ashes flew up into the blue sky
amongst the stars.
One night, the whole gang greeted each other —
vegetation, turtles, trees, grasses, stars.
It was a magnificent symphony along the shore
of the Big Lake.

I wanted to write
a pithy poem ever bright,
but the block was there
and all I could do was stare
out the window at the air.

We have passed existentialism
and now are reaching the outer
limits of nihilism while entering
full-blown solipsism as the viral
Temporary Occupant says not to
take the virus seriously as he
leaves Walter Reed for the
White House so he can show
that he is the “manly man” who
needs to be out on the trail.
Has someone thought to start
the William Tell Overture as he
falls off the Trojan Horse in a
grand gesture of the utterly ab-
surd and as Tonto raises his eye-
brows and asks, “What you mean
we, white man?” and Alfred E
Neuman says, “What, Me Worry?”?

Everyday she watches detective stories
on TV. It is a great diversion from the

horror stories in everyday life all around
her. She watches as the detectives

discover a human skeleton in the bushes.
What is missed and dismissed is the

magnificent mystery of what is all around 
the bones — lush vegetation, pink and blue 

flowers, ornamental grasses and evergreen 
trees — life. And in the middle of all the 

lush life? A dead, white, human skull.

Misery loves company is the cliche.
It’s a cliche
because it is always that way.
That must be true;
that’s how it became a cliche
and that cliche was once more at play
with the words “Love!!!” and something like
“wishing the best to all with the virus today.”
Seriously, those previously unspoken
words were uttered by the stricken Temporary
Occupant and his likewise stricken bride?
If the Corona Twins stay alive,
will those words survive
or will the twins once again dismiss and deride?

I was hoping the next-door neighbor
was going to build a community pool
in his front yard after a hard maple
tree died in the tiered section of the

yard. You see, we are half of an ass-
ociation, our half simply being a state,
county, township neighborhood with
access to the Big Lake being the only

commonality in our part the association.
The other half of the association is a
homeowners’ association with a ton of
rules and regulations. Some of the people

living there didn’t like going to the
beach with the few renters in our half
of the association, never calling the
renters riffraff but, you get the pic-

ture. It’s called territorial imperative.
They managed to scare enough of our
half of the association to voting with them
so renters couldn’t use the beach access.

That, of course, is unbinding for our
part of the association because we are
just a neighborhood under the rules of
the state, county and township. So,

while the few renters can still go to
the beach in spite of the umbrella assoc-
iation bylaws, some might feel intimi-
dated, so I thought the neighbor could

build the swimming pool specifically for
them and as the members of the home-
owners’ association drove by on the street
that leads to the gate for beach access,

they would see the renters frolicking in the
swimming pool to which members of the
homeowners’ association were not invited.
Instead, environmentalist that he is, he

just planted trees in his yard, which is
fine, too, because it’s good for the envi-
ronment and the renters still have access
to the Big Lake where they can frolic under

the noses of the hoity-toity. This is espec-
ially true now with the high waters having
washed away a lot of the beach, so they can
be quite cozy, environmentally good too.