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.

There is nothing new under the sun.
What about Gutenberg’s printing run?
Heralded as the invention of centuries,
what about the Chinese’ printing entries
four-hundred and fifty years before.
But, hey, who’s keeping score?
Give thanks to Gutenberg and the Chinese
for the simple pleasures that so please.
Books are books; reading is reading
and we, beneficiaries, keep our brains feeding.

The storm clouds gathered
While the wind blew from the north
And then blue came through.

Have you noticed the cantor’s call —
deep in sorrow and with those who suffer?
The cantor stands before the pall.

Justice, justice the cantor calls to pursue
for the female justice who was Yahweh’s follower,
through and through —

so proud of her people who through
centuries of pain
experienced, persevered and remained
faithful to the vision, eternity’s call —

justice, justice, was her call
to seek freedom, choice, inclusion, balanced scales —
and the mutuality of the beloved community for all.

Such shall not fail.

I have a pocket-size copy of the
Constitution of the United States,
thirty-eight little pages including
all the Amendments. Never before
has so much depended on so little…
or to quote Churchill, “Never in the
field of human conflict was so much
owed by so many to so few,” and by
that I mean owed by so many to so
few pages of Constitutional Republic
genius. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

She’s always my pastor to me                    
even when she stopped being the pastor of my community.
That’s the only thing she could ever be.
She was called to serve my community
but she was never a member of that body.
She could never be a friend to me
because she will always be my pastor to me.
Friends and acquaintances are in my community.
Where does my pastor find camaraderie?
With other pastors? Maybe.
It’s a vocation that can be very lonely.
She could never be a friend to me
because she will always be my pastor to me.
It is only through those eyes that I can see.
For pastor and parishioner, a great divide will always be.
She can never be a friend to me.
She will forever and ever be pastor to me.
That’s the only thing she could ever be.
Whose friend could she be?

If I had a real poet’s name,
a name like Pádraig Ó Tuama,
I might be taken seriously,
and I wouldn’t have such insecurity and trauma,
or maybe Seamus Heaney
and people would find me poetically brainy
or how about Ocean Vuong?
Then nothing would go wrong
and people would see the deep blue sea
of poetic profundity in me.
And then there is Joy Harjo
and I would be thought a real poetic pro,
but what do you do with a name like Bob?
How can a poet be named Bob?
It is so pedestrian, so banal, so ordinary.
And so, I just sit here and sob.
Why couldn’t my parents have named me Robert,
like so many great poets
a name meaning “of great fame”?
Oh, wait, they did
and such fame I stand ready to claim,
a designation that clears the poetic fog
and I have nothing but deep
appreciation and gratitude
to the people who visit my blog.

*the poets named above are featured
in an issue of the e-newsletter of On Being.

Some say he’s a solipsist;
most say he’s a narcissist;
either way, he won’t cease and desist.
As a solipsist, for him, nothing exists
outside of his cranial cyst,
unlike the narcissist
who stares into the lake’s mist
but knows something else exists.
For him, ego and service don’t mix
and so the election, he will corruptly fix
or at least he will try, but hopefully, that’s nixed
and he loses and goes directly to jail.

It is nothing new to say that we
are in the grip of a play directed
by a madman, while we just wring

our hands and then sit on our thumbs
ignoring what is happening on stage —
the reality that hundreds of thousands

of our fellow actors have died
and hundreds of thousands more
stand in the wings of the plague’s

stage ready for their entrance into
the madman’s play and fast exit
stage left. The existentialists just

shrug and say hang in there; the
nihilists mutter “humph” and we
told you so; and the rest of us just

squirm in our comfortable, cushion-
ed seats as the lights come down
and the curtain goes up on the final

act and we wonder if the director
will summon us when every other
actor has exited.