FIRES THIS TIME

Clackamas, Oregon, September 12, 2020


by Carolyn Martin

Dozens still missing in Oregon. Burnt roses are seen outside a destroyed home as destructive wildfires devastate the region on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, in Talent, Ore. (AP Photo/Paula Bronstein via OregonLive)

While I check out evacuation routes
and pray our packed cars are precaution,
not necessity, thousands have lost
all there is to lose except each other
and maybe a treasure or two:
a dog, a cat, livestock raced
to fairgrounds, a child’s diary.

They don’t see what we—
the hunkered-down-in-place—see:
miles of ash heaps, contorted
cars and trucks, war-weary firefighters
who breathe the unbreathable.

Meanwhile, my mother lies in a NJ nursing home.
She can’t remember if she ate her lunch
or how to answer her phone. I watch her mind
slip into the smoke that wipes out
our Douglas firs and seeps into our home.
Today she doesn’t know her air is clean
or that nineteen years ago, she breathed
the ash of 3000 souls drifting
through another blackened sky.


Carolyn Martin is happily retired in Clackamas, OR where she gardens, writes, and plays with creative friends. She is the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation.

ELEGY

by Gil Hoy

Source: Dignity Memorial

An old dear friend of mine passed on April 16.
I, like many others, will sorely miss him.

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person
coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

My friend, Berton, was a 90 year-old gentleman
who lived in a nursing home in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Last month, he succumbed to complications from the coronavirus.

Bert enjoyed reading poetry to the workers at his nursing home.
They looked forward to it. He also played music for them
and was generous in expressing his gratitude for the comfort
and care they provided him.

"We think we have it very well under control. We have
very little problem in this country—five—and those people
are all recuperating successfully."

As a boy, Bert spent much of his time helping family fishermen
haul in their catch from the local pier. He always loved the sea.

"Now, the virus, a lot of people think that goes away in April
with the heat. Typically, that will go away in April.
We’re in great shape. We have 12 cases—11 cases,
and many of them are in good shape now.”

Bert was a soldier in the Korean War. He later served
his community as a social worker, professor, counselor
and political activist.

“So we’re at the low level. And we could be at just one
or two people over the next short period of time.”

Bert loved everyone. Everyone he encountered
knew that he did.

“And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15
within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,
that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

My old friend raged against poverty and injustice. He worked
throughout his life to create more affordable housing.

“It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—
it will disappear.”

Bert attended the 1963 March on Washington. He later taught
at Tufts School of Medicine and the University of Massachusetts.
His students admired him greatly.

“No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”

My dear friend was a lover of poetry throughout his life. His two
favorite verses were: "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow
in the sky," and "My love is like a red, red rose."

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and semi-retired trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. His poetry has appeared, or will be appearing, most recently in Tipton Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, TheNewVerse.News, Right Hand Pointing, MisfitMagazine, Mobius: Journal of Social Change, Ariel Chart and elsewhere.

HALLOWEEN AT THE NURSING HOME

by Michael Mark

Image source: Reddit

The tombstones and zombie decorations
look more scared than scary among those
living in translucent skin, rolling their
wheelchairs with skeleton hands,
gasping in their oxygen masks.

The Grim Reaper creeps along the corridors,
behind a walker, to the costume contest,
scythe taped to his back with bloody bandages.

The bedridden plead for him not to pass them by.

No one pulls back in fright or shrieks
from anything other than pain or dementia
or to let themselves and anyone else out
there know they are, for good and bad,
still alive.


Only when the grandchildren come to trick-
or-treat in their jack-o-lantern and fairy
princess costumes do their sunken eyes
rise from their sockets and their colorless
lips tremble with fear.


Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer. His poetry has appeared in Angle Journal, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Empty Mirror, Everyday Poets, Forge Journal, Lost Coast Review, New Verse News, Petrichor Review, Scapegoat, Silver Birch Press, Red Booth Review, The thing itself, The New York Times, The Wayfarer, Work. His poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.