Since the start of this
world-shattering pandemic
I know deep in my soul
that I have missed the sound
of a particular source of music -
a soundtrack, a beat,
a rhythm of life that can be heard,
felt, and seen within your minds eye,
whether it be morning, noon, or night:
the same pulse of inspiration
that first surged within me
at the very moment when
I knew that I was born to be a poet.

What I love about writing
and what keeps me coming back
to the blank page time and again
is the same thing that I miss
about sitting in a café
surrounded by people,
before the days of mandatory masks
and before compulsory social distancing.

The thrill of the unknown,
the magic of the instantaneous,
the order and the chaos that to me
always made sense and which I could
always easily pull into focus:
all that being an artist is all about...
you can't plan for it, you can only create it
when you feel it within you boiling away
with such ferocity that you know
it is about to explode -
which is why artists need to capture
what occurs to them before
whatever idea forms combusts into dust
and becomes as spectral as a ghost.

I yearn to go back in time...
I wish that I could return to a place
at a point in the past where and when
I truly believed every moment
would always last...
I still cannot believe that we are all
living in the world that greets my senses
and compels my thoughts
and my emotions so overwhelmingly...
I wish that I could do something,
I wish that I could write something,
I wish that I could imagine something
that might serve to transport
everybody away from our current stark reality -
perhaps to a moment of peace, joy, and love
that the world once enjoyed,
or to a time in the future when I know
the memory of our current present
will not be as potent.

I have personal places
and I have particular times
where and when I return to within
my thoughts and within my dreams
that mean the world to me
that feel so close to me that I could
reach out and grasp them:
perfect moments the like of which
everybody has, which we all would do
anything to get back to,
which we never stop missing
and which are among life's
most precious of blessings.