Poetry for Pandemic Paralysis-1

“Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
     --Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing
These are days when we need poetry more than ever, as our mental muscles and spirit atrophy from the isolation of the pandemics of virus, racism and political mayhem.
I'm fortunate to know several poets, and their words and images stretch my spirit. As certain books choose you when you need them, so do certain poets arrive at just the right time. The three most recent have been Kay Lawson Gilbert of Pennsylvania, Ken Hada of Ada, and Nathan Brown, former Oklahoma poet laureate, now of Texas.
My friend, poet and blogger, Kay Lawson Gilbert  posted two poems this spring that so jogged my mind, pulled me deeper with her images. By the way, an earlier poem of hers paired with one of my watercolors, is in the right sidebar of this blog. With her permission they follow, and remember, they are copyrighted.
The Dual
"Something's at me today--
a tearing of form,
a stitching of words,
a definition of hours,
like a quiet folding
or unfolding
of the thinnest paper.
"It's like sitting with my back
against my own back and
trying to wrest something
from the sweat of my skin,
and the salt of my bones."

Pending

 "I can’t help thinking

that I would feel at home

in the closed off hives

under the pear trees

in amber stillness,

in the warm wax cells –

there to be born again

To a life of sweet daylight.

But – somehow, I survive

in a dim aging cellar,

where the spirits settle

among the oak barrels

that rise in the darkness

like communal hunchbacks,

awaiting clarification."

Kay Lawsona ter=Ken Hada
Nathan Brown