AERIE HABITATS FOR MORE OR LESS THAN HUMANITY (5)
“…there the eagle and the stork / On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build.”
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
Russian Dollies
“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”
is how Winston Churchill described Russia’s intentions
in 1939 at the beginning of World War II…
I am a Jew who’s descended from persecuted Eastern European
stock living in what is nowadays known as Belarus
but which at times was part of Germany, Poland or Russia…
Fourth of six grandsons just reached developmental age
whereby he notices plus gets intrigued by a set of two colorfully
painted wooden nesting shapes in BubbaCoach’s playroom…
One Matryoshka (“little matron”) doll appears to be a lovely
woman while the other wears a beard: each has five gradually
decreasing sizes of same characters stacked and placed inside…
My wife was called Doll Baby as a child. Over five decades, starting
with oldest grandchild’s mommy, we’ve learned to restrain interventions
during toddlers’ attempts to deconstruct then reconstruct these figures…
Watching, listening to struggles with object-within-similar-object
principles to un/peel metaphorical onions
become anticipated treats as next generations of kids mix-match
moms with dads with younger or older sibs, begin to unravel never-
ending biology-physics-psychology puzzles of sex, gender, procreation,
brother-sister rivalries – riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas.
Serendipitous New Nesting Site
More than little bit anxious what
we can do to entertain a grandkid
now visiting us for the first time
in six months since tight sequester
— he’s five and somehow detached
beyond COVID socially-distanced
+mask [I take that as my problem]—
but super mature budding birder
we luck out when loud swooshing
skyward sounds become embodied
in a gigantic mass of feathers & claws
which grab this tiny defenseless rabbit
then after feasting the beast perches on
our fence, presumably to crow while
digesting her prey: my son’s alert son
ecstatically identifies it as a golden eagle!
COVIDNALIA
i. Necessity Is Sure The Mother Of Invention
FEMA sent a team of doctors and nurses
to Corona-plagued Eisenhower Hospital
‘cause despite opening one totally new
floor for COVID plus using regular
space as ICU beds, they didn’t have
enough staff, between big overflow
and caregivers’ illnesses, to handle
their crisis. However, I loved this
as a retired primary care doc –-
physicians sent in (all previously
outpatient practitioners) at first
were treated as baby interns
with only four patients each
with great deals of support:
Of course, they are MDs,
so’d fast learning curves.
ii. ABC’s
Christ zoomed
us past cuneiform
into a language
of loving
which one way
dunno maybe
another’s lasted
for two millennia
but now question
is will AC BC
go down as before
or after COVID?
Unalloyed Joy
Oy, this maybe a moment.
Dad doesn’t burn me with an iron.
I’m finished recycling through their criminal injustice system.
Do more caring cops die from suicide than in the line of duty?
Instead you learn from Mom how to inhabit your words.
Now there is one new privilege to fail as well as be geniuses.
God came down to take my body but not my soul.
No more fat cats standing on our shoulders.
Censoriousness thought police pernicious cancel culture goes kaput.
Nada gotcha public humiliation.
Those are some Get Out of Jail Free card visions of better tomorrows.
Aspirationals
Astride big blue marble
so marvelous rising
over horizon
I can see one dear friend
from across the Pacific
here in California
as sun comes up for him
on Hawaii’s big island
and we partake
together checking in
before lowish doses
molly just right to
keep us jolly on even keels
disgorging our worlds
on FaceTime
after which if such goes
well, I’ll swallow
a little blue pill
and then dive into ecstasy
with a swell lady I love
to mollycoddle
now heading deep into
our fifth decade
sharing life.
Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for a handful of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published in academic-related journals (e.g., Universities of Chicago/ Maine/ San Francisco/Toronto, Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Pomona, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, Penn, Dartmouth, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Baltimore) plus national (e.g., Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Poetry Review, Peauxdunque Review, MiPOesias, American Journal Of Poetry, Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library Literary Journal, South Broadway Press, Parhelion, Clementine, pamplemousse, Red Wheelbarrow, Deluge, Poetry Quarterly, poetica, Tipton Journal, Hypnopomp, Free State Review, Poetry Circle, Buddhist Poetry Review, Poets And War, Thank You For Your Service Anthology, Wordpeace, Lowestoft Chronicle, 2020 International Human Rights Art Festival, Cliterature, Qommunicate, Indolent Books, Snapdragon, Pandemonium Press, Boston Literary Magazine, Montana Mouthful, Arkansas Review, Texas Review, San Antonio Review, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Brooklyn Review, pacificREVIEW, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, Fiction Southeast and The New York Times) and international publications (e.g., Review Berlin, London Reader, Voices Israel, Foreign Lit, New Ulster, Oslo’s Griffel, Transnational, Southbank, Wellington Street Review, Rome’s Lotus-Eaters, Nigeria’s Libretto). He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles: From Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate change justice. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com
The Literary Forest Poetry Magazine 