Sunday Poem: "The Shopping Carts Were Full"

The Shopping Carts Were Full

The shopping carts were full, some with three

and four packages of toilet tissue, and when I went

to purchase one package, the shelves were empty;

but why toilet tissue? What has the global pandemic

to do with stocking up on toilet tissue? Are we so

fearful of running out of toilet tissue that we cannot

manage to do without? Cannot we improvise?  Have

we become so pampered by personal comforts that

we cannot make do? We know why the contagion

is jumping from person to nation, and we don’t

know how to stop it, yet; but it, too, shall pass like

the Spanish flu, and when the global pandemic

has opened the world’s heart center, there will be

no more need to hoard toilet paper.

Poem to ponder: "Riding on the Fumes of Her Past Glory"

Riding on the Fumes of Her Past Glory

I listened to a medical intuitive on YouTube

the other day, an innovative thinker who’s New

York Times best-selling books I had read, but

a lot of water has passed under the bridge since

then, and she no longer engaged me as she once

did; and it came to me as I listened to her TED

talk, “Choices that can Change your Life,” her

eyes half-dead with the fatigue of over-speaking

her insightful truth, that she was riding on the

fumes of her past glory, getting all the mileage

she could from the ideas of her passionate youth,

and I wondered as I listened to her speaking: is

she doing this out of genuine concern, or for

past glory and personal gain?