racing ahead

With a name taken from science fiction 

Operation Warp Speed promises amazing results

Produced by competing capitalist pharmaceuticals 

Getting guaranteed government purchase payments

Considering all the hype from the hucksters

Promoting false hope for unproven COVID remedies 

The talk of a vaccine ready to deploy next month 

Presents as yet another untrue assertion 

But there is good reason to expect a vaccine soon

Made in China where science is preeminent 

Where multiple vaccine types are in advanced development 

Scheduled for full production in December 

Imagine the utter consternation here

Just three months from now if China has it

And the United States does not

And the whole world goes to China to get it

An event so much more momentous than Sputnik

When the whole world watched it twinkling across the night sky

Amazed as the Soviets sent Yuri Gagarin orbiting the earth 

While the ironically named Vanguard rockets failed to launch 

This is about human lives and the comparison is stark

Between the ongoing systemic failure here to contain the virus

And China's achievement keeping the pandemic under control 

With forty times fewer deaths despite four times greater population

To those apologists who ask what's the alternative 

Defenders of this corrupt government putting profits before people

The obvious answer cries out loud and clear 

Choose between socialist success or capitalist failure

ever changing habitat

That's virginia creeper I told her

After taking a closer look at the vine

She was examining trying to identify

Just now learning about invasive plants 

The leaves will soon turn red I said

Making it easy to spot in the foliage

And I asked if she had noticed the grass

Oh yes she knew it's called stilt grass

But I have a different take on invasive species

I went on to say to her we need to look at ourselves

As the first and foremost invasive species here

Talking about the two of us white people in America

That's an interesting perspective she replied

And went to join her horticultural group just arrived

And I went on my way to walk in the woods

Where I made my own most interesting discovery

I noticed a very large caterpillar ready to pupate 

Clasping onto a stem of virginia creeper vine

So heavy hanging down from near the tip

A pandora sphinx moth that this plant hosts

In this place posted with signs about restoring native plants

A commendable effort to cultivate a kind of historic garden

In this landscape that has a name taken from the native language 

There is no thought given to also restoring the native people 

This is the privilege of the weeders of the woods who garden here

To see themselves as working to protect and preserve nature 

But I see nature working independently to its own purpose

Expanding current species range in an ever changing habitat

Ramapo Lake September 8, 2020

album

my father's guns

The distant bangs and thuds and pops

Starting and stopping and starting again

Heard as we hike a trail in the woods

Not the soundscape we seek 

Familiar sounds from my childhood

Hearing rifles and pistols and shotguns firing

Every Sunday all summer for hours on end

When my father took us to the shooting range

It's not a good family time memory

It was an obsession with him

Never to be questioned or discussed

Why we were required to be there 

Guns are for killing and nothing else 

And even though this was target practice

And even though that's all he did

There was a palpable violence about it

He had so many guns kept in the basement

Several cabinets full of collected specimens

But only a few ever got taken out and fired

And only one really mattered to him 

A civil war relic a winner of match competitions 

Using minie balls forged in his special mold

Tamped with patches cut just so from special cloth

Measuring the exact number of grains of black powder

Such precision loading resulted in consistency

And all the practice made for near perfection

With dozens of prize medals displayed high up 

Out of reach of us curious children

So I grew up knowing how to shoot straight 

How to squeeze the trigger while exhaling gently

Holding steady against the explosive recoil

Not flinching even an inch

A skill with a limited application

Unless you are a hunter of wild animals or humans

And I am not such a sniper as that

Though it serves me well shooting photos

But what is this fascination with guns

What about the shock of loud noises is fun

To make someone want to repeat it again

Unless you like to feel you have the power to kill 

Was it because my father lost his father as a boy

Killed by his brother in a hunting accident

Or was it involved with some fantasy of glory

Fighting historic battles in the war to free the slaves

Questions I wonder about as I walk along

Watching the warm September sunlight sparkle

Dancing across the pond on an end-of-summer day

As the first leaves of autumn drift down underfoot