THE HUMAN PERSONIFIED
I stand meditating
At the knot
On my Kentucky cherry wood antique table
Circa Andy Jackson
It looked like the image of an elderly
American statesman of that day
He sports darkened sideburn whiskers
& stern, coal black penetrating eyes
Etched in a cherry wood profile.
I sit in my car, driving from the big Walmart
Listening to classical music;
it’s an unknown Romanticism piece
which , after the oldie goldie pop rock sounds
of the store
it, in contrast, sounds stultified and stiff.
I stand in my living room looking out at the
Tall live oaks, Georgia pines
And see a woman’s face
peering out from an oak’s trunk-she’s young and attractive
in a Greek classical way.
Yet I know I’m experiencing an optical illusion-
It’s just the simultaneous configuration
Of the sunlight, the oak’s shape
& the angle from which I view the woman’s face
Outside from inside my house.
There are days I see human faces personified
Several times
& days I see none.
Intensity of vision & chemical brain activities.
These & those contoured profiles
We just viewed in reading or in person
trigger these personifications in Nature
& in humankind’s appearance
No aliens?
Because who knows what an alien or
Ghost for that matter resembles?
True Freedom From Covid Comes…
A.
I would be happy to see its death mask:
Cease & desist, buried
Having lost my brother at 71
Who couldn’t resist its fate
Couldn’t resist that wretched pandemic of 2021
couldn’t deny its death date.
FREEDOM COMES at the start, middle
and finish line of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic race.
We buy groceries for ourselves, family, friends
but, if not resilient enough, lucky enough-
A lot of Blacks, people of color
impoverished whites-
you can’t always buy them
so than you & yr. family might starve.
FREEDOM: we must purchase it, & eat it too
Each microcosmic minute, day
each macrocosmic year.
We encounter Freedom like any interstate highway;
full of unpredictable, circumstantial detours
interstate off ramps
dangerous railroad crossings.
Freedom’s encountered
When we, each board a passenger 747
We 2021 Covid pandemic
Mask-wearing humans;
for we battle w./ a virus
every time we enter a store
church, temple, mosque
doctor or dentist’s office
workplace, hospital
school
restaurant, lounge.
A living organism
it ever mutates in our sacred human bodies
It’s presents us with one of the ultimate tests
of true freedom.
It tests us unlike America’s past wars tested us.
this powerful army’s members total
The number of stars in our prolific galaxy.
All of humanity
Faces the horror
It faced once upon another time.
the disease & death-bearing plagues
& pandemics of old.
For they excised our freedom-
Humanity’s scientific vision then
was too nebulous, even blind then
to medieval & renaissance European scientists
& in Post WWI Europe & the U.S.
(The Spanish Flu).
freedom may today may be tested
by this one absurdity:
that a contagious microscopic beast
invades our bodies
slinking, even mutating from body to body
decimating populations
throughout the Americas
throughout the globe.
B.
Entrenched suffering now follows us
as if the fate of Sisyphus, it’s our mocking shadow
following each & every move,
we creatures of habit
may succumb to-our each, very breaths
emanating
straining like a faulty a/c unit
within our saccular, thoracic lungs
some humans/citizens
immunocompromised.
Here in the U.S.
To retain each, our incandescent hearts beating
to the motifs & rhythms
of freedom-filled homes
we won’t vote autocrats to congress
nor a president who chomps & grinds us
with corrupted, teeth & fetid mouth
with which he lies to us
concerning the Covid virus
his attitude disingenuous, obstreperous
toward implementing a cure-
the harmonious goal
of true freedom.
A THOUGHT, A RELIEF, A PRAYER
We can predict what will happen
but what will happen will happen anyway.
The resulting event only can we be thankful for
with a prayer, religious service
or thanksgiving ritual banquet
Or the like praying
that for what we prayed for
that that turned out right and just
to all wise, discerning, concerned.
Michael Correia was born in Sydney, Australia, just after WWII to an Australian mum & a Portuguese American dad, Manual Correia, from New Bedford, MA. He taught English Composition & Reading for over 30 years in Tampa Bay & now, in Gainesville, have taught Creative Writing for the past 8 years. He published two books of poetry, Some of America Traversed, w./ Xlibris, 2009, Philadelphia, PA & Little City New Century, Cawing Crow Press, Dunlo, PA.
