Mourning # 4

Mourning # 4

 

In virus time

I get up tired and bored in the morning

I don’t enjoy my cereal

check social media, get dressed, off to work

produce, consume, destroy the planet

I think I have opinions and feelings

do I truly mean anything I do

as I drive the streets do I notice

the bags of trash left out by the sidewalk

to be taken away and recycled

I don’t notice them anymore, there are

too many, I have my sports to keep up on

and dinner to plan, I saw a photo

of a mountain, a mountain range, a continental drift

then a kitten head poking from a toilet paper roll

that made me laugh, it looked so odd.

 

---- John Prine, I loved John Prine, his songs

were simple and sardonic, he made his first

record in 1971, he wrote with a friend every

Tuesday morning, then they had some meatloaf

at a diner next door, then they recorded the song

in the afternoon, about 52 a year, while not

touring. John Prine had cancer in his throat and

tilted his head, he had to learn to sing again

that took years, then he got lung cancer, more

operations and therapy, back to singing, he had

to take his songs to the people. John Prine wrote

a song that I heard on a friend’s LP in 1977 and

I still remember a line about the bottle drinking

the life out of the alcoholic, I still remember that

today, John Prine’s songs will still mean a lot

to a lot of people, he got COVID in March and

died in April at age 73, just 7 years older than

me.