Brief

Life is brief.

What should I do today?

I wanted to walk to Lower Manhattan yesterday, the third day of June. If there is a rally at Foley Square, or anywhere, I would go to that and take pictures. I want to defy Covid-19 to show solidarity with the protestors, but the forecast was for thunderstorms all afternoon. The virus continues its, work, expands its work, and I attend to the work of making revolution and saving humanity by posting things on Facebook and going to virtual rallies on Zoom.

I don’t really know what to do. There are plenty of chores I need to do, eventually. I won’t list them here, they would bore you to death, as they are boring me to death. I can’t concentrate on them because now something is happening all over the world. The virus is all over the world and now a movement, a demand for life. 

The virus of revolution has come to us.

Darryl’s memorial service is on Zoom this afternoon.

zoom zoom zoom

Life is brief. 

Brief like a word, transient I mean, a breath,

a sound gasped by the lungs and shaped by the mouth,

articulated by tongue and teeth,

in the primal act of signifying,

an evolutionary adaptation created in our Mother Africa,

the womb of humanity,

Eve Herself, 

Mother of Life,

embracing and embraced by the othered,

in the primal creative act of uniting and separating.

Children of Unity at play.

This is only a poem about Life. 

Capital L to signal a vocal emphasis, if read aloud.

We are children of Adam, children of dust, and we have been given Life giving breath,

we have been given Life to give and to share.

A life is brief but Life is ever-lasting, infinite, and never forgets us.

The tree that falls in a forest makes a sound that is heard by the forest,

and that tree does not die but is transformed and remembered by the forest.

A brief life that falls and stops breathing is swallowed by

the all-embracing Life system that watches over me,

that is my holy Mother of God,

Guadalupe

Guadalupe is made of wood and stands in front of me.

Candlelight throws her brilliant dancing shadow on the wall.

Only a projection, I know, of an object you and I found in a gift shop in Williamsburg, and we loved her and we named her 

The Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

The Deacon called me this morning and told me her father died.

She tried to call me last night and the phone was in the other room and I was in bed and had turned off the light and I wanted to sleep.

I’m so sorry, I said.

Her father had moved back to Birmingham last October, and bought a house.

Yesterday he sat on the steps in front of the house and died.

He went home to die, I said.

Her mother died seven years ago on June second and her father died on June third.

When my father died I fell into the abyss, but my father’s love and my mother’s love still manifest themselves to me. 

Your love manifests itself to me in tears.

How can I explain this to anyone?

A life is brief, but life is everlasting and love is as strong as death, I think.

I wish you could meet the Deacon, 

you would love her.