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.
