PAD Day 26: More Musing on Our Times

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "change" poem, and (2) write a poem based on an "almanac" prompt. Using the following list, fill in your answers in 5 minutes or less - in other words, don't over-think them, just answer with the first thing that pops into your head. Then use your answers as the basis for the poem.

The first prompt is a no-brainer: What hasn't changed in our world in the past few months? The second one is more challenging, but not as much so as yesterday's NaPoWriMo prompt. And, as with yesterday's, it resulted in a kind of freewheeling, stream-of-consciouslnes poem from me. So here's the list, with my answers, followed by my poem. I tried to use my answers to the list in the same order in the poem, but gave that up about midway through, although they still generally move from the beginning to the end. I used them all, though a few are kind of indirect references.

Almanac Questionnaire

Weather: Light rain
Flora: dandelion
Architecture: Independence Hall
Customs: handshake
Mammals/reptiles/fish: squirrel
Childhood dream: tornados
Found on the Street: dime
Export: corn
Graffiti: anarchy symbol
Lover: my wife

Conspiracy:  Pizzagate

Dress: jeans
Hometown memory: pink split level house
Notable person: Bruce Springsteen
Outside your window, you find: playhouse
Today’s news headline: Trump suggests disinfectant injection
Scrap from a letter: Very truly yours
Animal from a myth: Pegasus
Story read to children at night: Goodnight Moon
You walk three minutes down an alley and you find: trash
You walk to the border and hear: Spanish
What you fear:  heights
Picture on your city’s postcard: cherry trees           

Aprilcalypse

A light spring rain falls on Sunday morning

and the dandelions on my lawn.

I am here, not far from Independence Hall,

while democracy shakes like a leaf,

just as shaking hands is going out of style.

Squirrels dart across deserted streets

and tornados, my childhood nightmare,

rip through the South. This world can turn

on a dime, a dirty dime like the one I found

by the curb yesterday. From cornfields

to tenements, change is rattling the husks

and window panes. Some have spray painted

anarchy symbols and swastikas anonymously

in the alley by the trash cans; others boldly

brandish them on protest signs.  My wife and I

watch the news looking for facts, while others

eat up Pizzagate and the Deep State,

jumping into a chasm of disinformation.  

They fear Spanish and Chinese like I fear heights.

I grew up in a pink split-level, wear jeans

like Springsteen, build a playhouse for my grandkids

and read them Goodnight Moon.  Now I have

a President who asks if we can inject disinfectant

to kill the virus in us, and I think of the film

Idiocracy. (Dear Mr. President, please sit down -

you're not helping. Very truly yours, a citizen.)

I wish I could just fly away from here, mount

a poetic Pegasus and lift us both into the clouds.

But solace will have to come from the real world,

like the empty boulevard lined with cherry trees
that bloom in the rain in my home town.