Unexpected gifts from Charleston to Chicago and Chicago to Charleston

Two fights up, two flights down

And I can’t hear.  I have airplane ear.

I have cotton in my ear,

It won’t clear.  I yawn,

but no pop do I hear.

What a nuisance; “I’m so sorry,”

the muffled sympathy roars.

I worry I’ll hear no more

Still dumbfounded

My head is stuffy and sore.

Hark, it seems I’ve lost my voice also.

“What? Come again,” they say,

Inside my head I bray--

But they tell me I speak so softly

It’s as if I’m far away.

And they are right. I feel apart.

There is a moat between us now

With loss of sound I can avow

It is no small thing to have a head full of fog

For a dimness of speech is also endowed.

Morning on the porch

This morning, the porch is strangely wet

Dampness having been everywhere

Yet, there was no storm last night.

The dog takes no notice

He sniffs attentive to the earth

Singularly focused as I am often not.

Encircled by this mystery of moisture

And surrounded by a lovely quiescence

I survey my world.

It is a new place here to take in

No fields of corn filled with snow

No Java Joe’s. It even smells different.

A friendless beginner, a babe

I am a tree rooted on a shoal in the ocean

Hoping sand will gather and make a beach.

The beach growing with each tide

Until it is a solid floating island in the sea of time

And I can plant my soul.