The head flight attendant
from hell asked me what I
wanted to drink. “Diet Coke,
please.” She then turned
to the next person and
asked what he wanted to
drink and then said,
“Wait. Don’t say Diet
Coke. I have just two
words for you, just two —
kidney stones. So, what
do you want?” “A Diet
Coke,” my neighbor said.
She then tossed a package
of cookies onto my tray.
Again she turned to my
neighbor and asked what
he wanted in the way
of a snack. She offered
three choices. I said,
“You just threw down a
package of cookies onto
my tray and didn’t offer
a choice. I would like
some peanuts, please.”
She tossed a package of
peanuts onto my tray and
pushed the cart away. “And
I paid good money for this?”
I mumbled to myself to which
she turned and barked, “Did
you just say something!”
“Who, me? I’m just sitting
here growing a kidney stone.”

He read about a doomsday
scenario related to global
warming apparently which sent
many readers of the article
into depression and therapy
and some suicides, undoubtedly.
He tried to imagine life without
electricity especially in the
winter. He would have to trek
up and down the dune for water
from the Big Lake and then
find a way to start a fire to
boil the water. His wife asked
how he would start a fire in the
winter with snow all over the
ground. It stopped him in his
Yaktrax tracks. He didn’t know.
He attained the rank of Webelos
but never joined the Boy Scouts.
Just another one of life’s regrets
and missed opportunities.

Snow falls in the lingering
winter. A black-capped

chickadee hops from branch
to branch in the yew bush

outside my window. Then
a female cardinal hops on

and hops around. The red
berries with their poison

black cores are long gone
but the needles hang on.

The birds nibble at the
needles. “Are you that

hungry this winter or are
you starting to think of

nesting?” Time will tell.
Routines go on in the face

of climate change even for
the birds. Will the birds

wake up to the impending
disaster before we do? My

hunch is that they will.
What will they then do?

What will we do when we
get up and out of denial?

Time will tell in the short
time we have left.

Jeannie lived two doors north
and she was about six months
younger than I was; we were both
about nine; Bobby lived next door
to the south and he was about
six months older than I was; we
were about nine. I remember that
because I was nine when my family
moved and I would never see
Jeannie or Bobby again. Where we
moved to wasn’t that far away, just
a few miles, but, apparently, it
might just as well have been a
universe away. We couldn’t drive;
there was no public transportation
between the city and the suburbs,
so we said goodbye and cried and
that was that. But Jeannie and Bobby
were my two friends from the time
we could walk until my family moved.
We would stand out in front of each
other’s house and shout, “Yo, Jean-
nie–ee, do you want to come out and
play–ay?” “Yo, Bobby–ee, do you
want to come out and play–ay?”
We would watch Superman at each
other’s homes on a rotating basis
but my mother was the only mother
who let us jump off the couch like
we were able to leap tall buildings
with a single bound. I haven’t found
Jeannie or Bobby on the internet.
They come back to me when I see an
advertisement for a new Superman movie.

A writer wrote that he never truckled,
that he told it as he saw it,
what he understood to be truth
and what he later still understood to be truth,
but he died at thirty-two,
so he didn’t have to suffer
the consequences of his refusal to truckle
in judgment, rejection, reaction from fear
and perhaps even physical violence.
The terminal violence of a burst appendix
saved him from such potential violence.
Maybe he wouldn’t have cared and
would have continued never to truckle
even if someone twisted his arm and
told him to cry uncle.
We’ll never know,
but we can admire the man
who never truckled
from a distance, in a time
when leaders truckle
and buckle
and continue to suckle
at the teat
of the biggest bully on the street,
called Fifth Ave,
where he totes a gun
and says he can shoot and
kill anyone
and can get away
and never have to pay.
Ah, for just one today
who wouldn’t truckle
his or her life away.

*on the anniversary of the day in 1933 that “the Nazi Party won 44 percent
of the vote in German parliamentary elections, enabling it to join with
the Nationalists to gain a slight majority in the Reichstag. Within three
weeks, the Nazi-dominated Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which gave
Hitler dictatorial powers and ended the Weimar Republic in Germany”
The Writer’s Almanac, March 5, 2019.

they have the burden,
or is it the privilege,
of seeing it all,
all the utter humanness
of the preacher, the bad
moods and then the
saccharin sweet smile
for the parishioner, the
shouts in the evening
and then the prayers
at breakfast, the sweaty
smells from jogging and
then the Old Spice
floating out from under
the robe and collar.
yes, they have the burden,
or is it a privilege to
see it all, all the utter
humanness of the preacher.

There is an edge that is gone;
sharp, not in a way that would wound,
but keen, intense, alive at dawn.
Oh, if ever such an edge be found.

The edge was dulled with death,
sudden, swift, hammered upon an anvil.
Years have gone and her breath
still catches in her chest, a shell.

The doctors adjure suffering transformed
to compassion is a cure for the best.
Still…to have that edge of innocence reformed
in a yearning, longing breast.

A white said to a white, “It’s time for blacks and
browns to put this whole racism thing behind them
and move on.” A black said to a brown, “It’s time
to tell the white to get out of denial and dry off.”
The brown said to the black, “Oh, and mention
that denial isn’t a river.” A red said, “Tell him
it’s time to move through the Red Sea.” A yellow
said, “To freedom for you and me. Jesus loves
the little children, all the children of the world,
red and yellow, black, brown and white, they are
precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children
of the world.” The evening’s leader said, “Please
stand, hold hands,” and they all began, “Our Father….”

If the Oval Office occupant were benign,
Probably everything would be just fine.
After all, it is quite entertaining
As long as the nation is sustaining,
But because he is such a malignant narcissist,
Everything seems to be going “psssst.”
The air is escaping the national balloon
And I wish the occupant was
A character in a harmless Looney Tune.
But that is not the case,
And from office, he must be chased,
So we can go back to securing the national balloon
Without fear of being mugged
By a gang that can’t shoot straight,
His New York mafia type goons.

I have a friend who is like
little balls of mercury on a table
And you have to corral them all together.
How are you able
to corral loose mercury on a table?
So I just hold my hands on the sides of the table
and hope to catch the
wild, little balls before they fall off,
because if they fell on the floor,
they might be stepped on and make
that many more
wild, little balls of mercury.
There’s no putting my friend
back in some conventional tube.
My friend is like toothpaste squeezed from the tube.
There’s no going back.
My friend can’t even be scooped.
And so, my friend remains
wild and crazy
and I still hold my hands
at the table’s edge
so my friend doesn’t fall off
and onto his head.