Fog and the Fat Cat

—Poetry by Catherine Fraga, Sacramento, CA
—Public Domain Photos

THE BODY COLLECTOR

If you asked him,
which you won’t
because the question
is trapped for eternity
in your throat,
he would nod yes,
he remembers
every body.
In the first eight days
of the coronavirus,
1,891 New Yorkers died
in their homes.
Slumped on a kitchen floor
of chipped linoleum.
On a bed, sheets dotted
with tight fist marks.
On a faded dark green sofa
with an ivory afghan.
On the first day,
in an apartment in
Midwood, Brooklyn,
Mr. Henry’s mouth is still ajar.
His gray cardigan is still buttoned,
one shoe missing.
Even with the restriction
of wearing a body length
plastic protective gown,
a surgical mask,
thick blue gloves,
the collector tries to keep
Mr. Henry’s head
straight on the pillow.
He tucks a tissue between
the man’s lips,
covers him with a sheet.
The collector makes no space
for sadness.
He does not know
how to name it.

THE PROBLEM WITH IGNORANCE DURING A PANDEMIC

Fog arrives near dawn, when the temperature of the day is at its lowest and the earth at its most vulnerable. I think about Carl Sandburg’s famous poem about fog, arriving on little cat feet. A single-minded virus enters the landscape, as quiet and unsuspecting as a cat. Lingering behind wet clouds of deceit. A cat takes her sweet time before moving on and disappearing. The virus ignores the rules. Continues to hover through afternoon. We wait for evening, certain that relief will consume us. Impatient for the sun to set, the color of a marble you fought to keep. It is agony, but we must wait and wait for the end of the gray. Even when the president tells us the churches will be packed and Easter will be a beautiful time. 

NEAR THE KENYAN BORDER

Pandemic mask tight
against nose and mouth,
fruitless protection
against his agony.
He squints at the
swarm of desert locusts
consuming his fields,
inhaling the grasses with abandon,
voracious in their task,
fields meant only
for his livestock
to thrive,
not die from hunger.
A failed garden of cassava,
a local staple,
translates to certain death.
He worries about travel restrictions
from the corona virus,
delivery of pesticides delayed.
Six inches below his aching feet,
more evil transpires,
locusts bury their eggs,
a place where pesticides
do not invade. 

WHAT WE MISS WITHOUT MUSEUMS

Listen, are you breathing, just a little, and calling it life?
                              —Mary Oliver, Poet
 

After this is over,
yes, I want too much.
A weekend at the ocean,
coffee and grilled cheese
at The Fat Cat Café,
sharing a picnic
of oranges and ham sandwiches
with my sons
in Central Park.
And a day to wander
this way and that,
through the impossibly
high ceilinged rooms
of a museum.
Inhale every photograph,
every painting
every story.
Museums know
the desire of our hands.
Guards appear around corners
to caution us back.
Everything untouchable
yet so evocative of touch.
We lean in:
the paint is thick,
the texture melancholy,
sometimes celebratory.
And deep within a brush stroke
of burnt sienna,
or a photograph of Medicine Crow,
wizened and proud, 
We remember again
our extraordinary freedom.

ALEXA AND THE PANDEMIC

When I must hear
Marvin Gaye’s voice
filling my kitchen,
she accommodates.
She even knows that
“Sexual Healing” is
the song I want played first.

She reports the weather,
the current time in South Africa,
the population of Belgium,
how long to bake chicken thighs,
the ingredients
for Dorie Greenspan’s
lemon breakfast cake.

Two days ago
I misplace my cell phone;
Alexa calls me
and I recover it 
under the comforter.

Her knowledge and
expertise is remarkable,
and she never fails to impress
friends and family visitors.

Things she will never know:
the weight of isolation
settling on my shoulders,
under my skin,
and the answer to
when will this be over?

COVID-19: CIVILIZATION ON TEMPORARY FURLOUGH

We gasp at the photographs
filling social media,
videos of wild animals thriving
in newly deserted cities,
just shadowy power lines and antlers.
One journalist calls it
the return of the repressed.
The truth, however,
is sobering.
Most of these creatures
have been there all along.
It is merely a revelation of things
that have always been,
but have gone unnoticed.
Bathed in sunlight,
nothing to see now but
Japanese sika deer
walking the streets of Nara,
wild boar roaming Italian towns.
A family of Egyptian geese crossing
the empty tarmac of Tel Aviv’s airport.
Goats clipping garden hedges
and cantering along the streets
of a Welsh seaside.
Flocks of wild turkeys
strutting about Harvard Yard,
remembering the forest that once grew there.
Wide deserted sands
packed with flocks of seabirds and turtles.
The Venetian fish were always there,
now no longer hidden
in the muddied waters.
These returning animals
carry a promise of survival,
a vision of recovery.
They are far from flesh and bone.
They are emissaries of hope
and possibility,
a better world when
the darkness is gone.

_______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

PANDEMIC PROJECT
—Catherine Fraga

Several months ago,
my neighbor
bought a kitchen chair
at a yard sale. Today, I watch her
garage door moan open.
She begins to strip
the chair’s former lives away.
I watch history
fall in tiny paint flecks
on the cement floor.
First, a shade of
dark, denim blue,
next a moss green,
finally designer maroon,
all three colors,
fragile memories exhausted
in scattered piles,
and a stripped chair,
its bones readying
for revival.
 
______________________

—Medusa, with our gratitude to Catherine Fraga today for her poetry about this pandemic and its effects on our lives. (No quick fixes here!)

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

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The snakes of Medusa are always hungry!

 

 Alexa—More snake-food, pronto!