waning moon—
stars coming back
that were never gone
*
“Even the buzz of a mosquito is a communication.”
—Róbert Gál (in New European Poets)
*
Coffeeshop Sunday
Morning sun tangled up
in a stranger’s hair;
her intelligence tangled up
in the book she’s reading;
and I——
*
Ritual
Meloxicam to soothe the angry disk between L2 and L3, pinched and bulging like a bitten tongue. Prilosec to save the stomach from the ravage of Meloxicam and to keep down the Resveratrol (an oblong lump of compressed soot said to keep the blood vessels pliant and cancer at bay). Also a capsule of fish oil the warm color of tequila añejo, and vitamin C of course, and a nugget called Nature’s Code whose purpose I can’t recall. Nevertheless I wash the whole handful down every morning with a half-sweet, half-biting antioxidant berry-juice mixture made to scape chemical rust off the walls of my many millions of aging cells. As in the past, in times rife with superstition—irrational, unscientific; fearful of demons, djinns, ghosts of ancestors, rival gods: this irritable reaching after time and health, this hapless genuflection….
A fine entry, Joe, from beginning to end. My thanks are all I add.