Muslim philosophers in the Middle Ages
Spoke of a Big Time, which is eternity
And of a Little Time which is the sense
Of our lives and our world’s durations
And sometimes they spoke of a third time
When Big Time and Little Time, traveling
As they do on separate paths suddenly
Touched, met, or become briefly congruent
And then you get this feeling hard to describe
Like magnets fitting into place
Or the click like the certain coupling of train cars
Although they of course didn’t have trains yet
And if we’re lucky and in that instant well slept
And undistracted for a change by our fears
We can sense that congruence even now
When the kids are playing
On the newly cut green grass
When the sun is setting
And no one within view is wearing more
Than the normal quite agreeable human mask
When someone is turning slices of zucchini
On the grill and someone else, likely a child
Of ours who will live on is mixing a drink for me
With mint from the little herb garden
And a yellow kayak has remarkably also
Found its way to the green lawn
Then I think I will rise from this comfortable chair
And walk over to it and feel how afloat I am in blessings
I will do that soon, not this moment, not quite yet.
Cereal Sonnet
My grandson stirs in bed in his shark pajamas
There’s also a picture of a great white on the wall
And I know there’s a t‑shirt or two and a bathing suit
With a thrasher and a hammer head, rows of teeth and all
Simply put, this fearsome, long-lived creature
Has my grandson’s wardrobe in thrall
Which is giving me an idea for all of us,
That we should take that tack to disarm the virus
Or at least our fear of it, by plastering the little corona
On our caps and shirts, on everything we own
The idea being to make it so common and so real
Maybe even create a spikey-shaped cereal
So that we begin to flaunt it and wear it, and even eat death
And in this manner we catch our breath