Poem for the week: "The Divine Logic of COVID-19"

The Divine Logic of COVID-19

I heard Toronto’s poet laureate on

CBC’s q last night, reciting his poem

“Thoughts in Time of Plague” that

he wrote to ease the tension of this

pernicious pandemic, and it came to

me as he recited his poem how the

world always turns to poets for solace

and comfort in times of need, like

this global crisis that’s thrown our life

into disarray; and Al Moritz ended

his poem with a call to charity with

the simple line, “The end was care,”

which, to my own poetic sensibilities,

was the divine logic of COVID-19,

the deadly virus that came to heal the

soul of the world by setting us apart

to unite us with each other, a thought

much too deep for joy or tears.

Poem for the week: "No Sadder Love"

No Sadder Love

Like a seed sown in fertile ground that

cannot grow without water and sun,

that’s the story of Far from Heaven, the

Hollywood movie of a 1950’s suburban

couple, “Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech,” apple

pie all the way, with a boy and girl and

split-level home in the best part of town,

and autumn leaves strewn on the ground

as the perfect couple’s black gardener

tends to their yard; but the golden couple’s

husband is gay and can no longer bear

to make love to his faithful wife, and she

has fallen for her widowed gardener, but

gay and interracial love is not permitted

by their culture, and with tears in my eyes

as the movie ended with the perfect wife

waving goodbye to her beautiful gardener,

I turned to the love of my life, my heaven

whose love I won by breaking convention,

and said to her, “There is no sadder love 
than the love that could have been.”