Waiting in the Fog

My daughter says
“you need to write again 
and tell everybody where you’ve been.”

I’ve been nowhere in over a year,
cherishing anything safe and dear,
but these thoughts of mine aren’t even clear, 
so often I dwell in a cloud of fear.

I went out into the world again
revisiting places I hadn’t been, and 
while many things looked how they used to look,
even the bookstores had fewer books.

Everyone zipping at their pre-COVID pace,
like the pandemic was elsewhere in outer space,
except half the people had covered their face.

The other half stupidly danced along
defiantly ignorant, like nothing was wrong.

I never thought we’d live this way,
year after year, day after day.
My heart ached from all the memory,
and I wanted to go back in history,
be free from this pain
like it used to be,
but my wish went unanswered,

it just haunted me.

So where’ve I been?
in a fog for a year,
waiting for my spark
to come back around here.

“Isn’t This Fun?”

The usual vibe
these coronavirus nights
is
my Ollie
planted between myself
and his sexy grandma
because we have
a king-size bed.

We play,
we giggle,
we slow down

and some nights
he fights sleep,
violently, desperately
as though something
in his 30 month soul
whispered a lie
that the sleep
would be eternal,
forever.

Finally,
his strength abates
and he surrenders
to the cool darkness
as we all  do,

and his breathing
is slow and deep,
as “The Cat in The Hat
Knows A Lot About That”
softly lullabies
him into narcosis
and this is our life:

the three of us
in this cozy, wondrous
cocoon of love,

and just as I drift away
I hear the cartoon cat
gleefully exclaim:

“Isn’t this fun!”