By: J.K. Durick

The Call

They said they’d call when
they got there, so you wait
pretending you aren’t worried
knowing you have no control
over this and many other things
in the lives of the people around
you. So they’ll get there or they
won’t. They’ll call to say they had
a bad trip or a good trip, or the call
will then come from someone else
the person who makes official calls
to the next of kin. It’s like that.
We sit on the sidelines with no real
control over the game, the lives
going on out there on the road going
where they are going. There’s the quiet
phone – why doesn’t it ring? And here
you are – you must wait, you will wait
as long as all this will take.

Spiders Conspire

These cobwebs gather on the ceiling
collect, connect, conspire against
us. They’re almost invisible, except
in certain light when they come out
to tell their tale of our neglect, of our
lapses in cleaning. They are there
patiently watching, waiting for us to
notice and do something about them
actually “try” to do something about.
They know how they are fated to win
to outlast us, to continue on generation
to generation. After we are gone they’ll
still be here, gathering, collecting and
connecting, conspiring against the next
people who call this very place “home.”
Like our cockroaches and our mice, they
will be around, like an eternal presence
like an infernal presence just watching and
waiting for us to be gone, like all the poor
housekeepers who came before us.

Lonely Kingdom

If you’re anything like me
an old man getting up in
the middle of the night or
very early morning, and if
you’re like me, you must
sit on your lonely throne
and look out at your empty
kingdom, a neighborhood
filled with little or nothing.
The houses are sleeping
and the streetlight casts
shadows that suggest more
than make a claim. The red
truck across the way loses
its color, becomes a colorless
shape. These trees take on
roles my imagination gives
them, become hands grasping
at the little bit of light there is.
And if you’re like me you sit
there, take it all in, and become
part of the dark lonely kingdom
that the night lets us rule over
if you are anything like me.

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J.K. Durick is a retired teacher, taught for years at Trinity College of Vermont and after that for many years at the Community College of Vermont. He and a friend started following the pandemic by writing a poem for every day – they now have run out of pandemic and have written 1817 and plan to continue till they run out.