My kitchen is dark so I slide the curtain
on the rod to look outside.
The sky is tan; the street tinted brown
like some of the movies of the fifties
about atomic blasts and mushroom clouds.
 
First, Covid and now everywhere
ashes lie on our cars,
driveways, and windowsills
from fires in the Angeles National Forest.
I turn on TV and see fires burning
along the whole west coast:
California, Oregon, Washington.
Is this a vision of end times?
 
Fire fighters struggle with no end in sight.
People are losing their homes;
some are losing their lives.
I can’t complain. I feel safe inside
where I’ve been holed up since March.
Yet there is plague, floods, fires
everywhere.
                        

The first Saturday
at home alone
I listen to the hum
of the dishwasher,
sirens wail
down the
boulevard near by.
The kids next door
bounce the basketball
in the street.
Our house usually
bustles with grown kids
living back at home.
They’ll soon be moving on.
Not now, not yet
Stay a little longer.

Today the quiet
enfolds me.
It feels nun-like.
I never had a solitary life.
I woke up thinking
it was a normal day.
My eyes follow the slant
of the sun shining
on his empty recliner.
                        

I waited my turn at the Serendipity Salon
in Teaneck, New Jersey,
for Michel, the French Canadian
to style my hair.
 
He charmed me, chatting feverishly
in his lovely French accent,
as he performed magic with his scissors.
I emerged feeling just like Jackie Kennedy.
 
He went south to seek his fortune
and there were always Michel stories
buzzing around the crowded salon.
 
He drove a Mercedes,
lived in an oceanfront condo
in Boca Raton,
and he was supposedly kept
by a wealthy Palm Beach man.
 
Until one day, a patron announced
Michel had died from AIDS.
the stylists held their dryers
and combs in mid-air,
a woman interrupted
her sip of coffee,
someone turned down the volume
on the radio,
and there was a moment of silence
at the Serendipity Salon in Teaneck.