View of yard outside window (cropped)

POEMS BY MAX REIF: “Pandemic” and “Looking at a photo of Miss Lindahl’s 5th-grade class, 1959”

Pandemic (a villanelle)

View of yard outside window

We cannot ascertain how grave things are,
Or where they’ll lead, by looking out windows,
As “bug” and economic bust conspire.

We have our food, and when we need, our car.
At night, we watch our favourite TV shows.
We cannot ascertain how grave things are.

The unseen enemy in this great war
We hide from, so that all of us don’t lose
As “bug” and economic bust conspire.

None know which ones will die, someday not far
Beyond this one. My friends, let us not pose:
We cannot ascertain how grave things are.

Decide what is for God, what for Caesar.
Strip off attachment as you’d strip from clothes,
As “bug” and economic bust conspire.

Both here and after saying “Au revoir”
We only keep what’s earned, of our repose.
We cannot ascertain how grave things are
As “bug” and economic bust conspire.

****
NOTE: Here is an article about the Villanelle form, which for me creates a bell-like effect in its repetition of rhymes and interweaving of lines in different patterns. My own thoughts about this time we’re living through were interweaving in a similar sort of way, and that was what led me to this poetic form. https://poets.org/glossary/villanelle

*****

Looking at a photo of Miss Lindahl’s 5th-grade class, Flynn Park School, 1959

5th grade class picture (1959)

Where are you, boys and girls
of Miss Lindahl’s fifth-grade class?
What became of you
when you slipped off
the far edge of my world?

Many of you
I never saw again,
or even thought of
until I saw this picture.

Yet you occupy a place
that can’t be filled
by anyone but you.
So much yourselves,
untrained as yet
in putting on a face.

Your faces are colours
long forgotten.
Your names sound notes
of a long-lost song:

Harvey Baer, Gail Rutherford,
Marion Phipps, Vyron Von Fuqua,
Temmy Goldwasser, Randy Wahl
.

Your names are bells that angels ring,
tolling the music of the spheres.

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images: Max Reif

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