MEERKAT POEMS

Dear George,

The meerkats are among my favorite exhibits at the zoo.  They’re always busy and active, diving in and out of their burrows, checking out the world about them.  I think they enjoy watching the humans as much as the humans enjoy watching them.  Here are a few meerkat poems, dedicated to their happy spirit.

Love,

Dave

My Meerkat Family

Here you have my family.

Meerkat Mob Number Two Thousand Four.

That is our mother standing at the rear.  

We Meerkats are called mobs.

though the British call us gangs.   

I am right near the middle.  

They say I have a serious look.

but it doesn’t really matter 

because all Meerkats have serious looks.  

We are not separate beings  

but interchangeable pieces  

in the Great Meerkat Collective.   

We look alike

think alike

act alike.

We are not as quick as cheetahs

as majestic as lions

as strong as rhinos.

But we are brave

and determined 

and when the apocalypse arrives

as it surely will 

we will be the last remaining species on earth

because we stick together

and prize the group above the individual.  

Humans could learn a lot from Meerkats. 

                           * * *

A Meerkat Primer

Not just anyone can be a Meerkat.

You have to be tough

also smart

very quick on your feet

able to scramble through a four-inch bolt-hole.

My family has lived in the desert for eons.

In July, one hundred and twenty at high noon

so we retire to the depths of our burrow

where it’s pitch black, cooler.

We spend the remainder of our time

hunting for food.

Butterflies and beetles, moths

maybe a lizard or a baby bird

if lucky, a small snake

an egg or two, some cactus seeds 

even a scorpion.

I get new brothers and sisters four times a year 

usually after a rainy season 

sometimes six or seven pups, sometimes three or four 

We Meerkats live to age thirteen 

longer than squirrels or skunks or rabbits.

There are half a million Meerkats

in the world today

five times as many Meerkats as giraffes. 

               * * *

The Sentries 

Raza and I are sentries

posted at our station dawn to dusk 

rain or shine, dust storms, lightning.

Ever vigilant

we don’t allow ourselves to  blink. 

Meerkats have deadly ancestral enemies

the hawk-eagles

the bat-eared foxes, the jackals

the spotted snakes with their long fangs

and poisonous venom.

My responsibility is to watch to the north

where the eagles fly in 

while Raza looks south

for the foxes and jackals.

We have keen vision and keen hearing

and at our slightest warning cry 

our family members dive into their burrow holes

ready to enjoy another Meerkat day 

               * * *

What Meerkats Think

Meerkats think all the time, you know. 

Not so much about life’s meaning

but more practical stuff

like the dozens of things my mom has told me.

Keep out of the midday sun

Mark our territory

 and defend against the rival mobs

Always take care of the baby pups

Drink the water when you come across it

The juiciest beetles hide under rotten logs.

And every day, of course, I think about our enemies.

How I might snatch an eagle right out of the sky

or twist a desert snake into knots

Gang up with my sisters and brothers

to chase away a hungry jackal. 

And most of all I think about Lavinia 

the sweetest Meerkat I’ve ever seen

who lives with her sisters across the great valley

and hopefully one day will be my bride.

I wonder if Lavinia ever thinks of me.

Eight-Three and Chugging Along

Dear George,

As I write this our son J and grandkids V and L are busy pressure washing our patio deck.  I can’t think of a better birthday gift.  Our deck has long been in a sad state of disrepair, and J has been working on fixing it since they arrived from California 10 days ago.  The last task is painting the deck.  J is supervising, while V is manning the pressure washer, and L is dislodging the chunks of dried paint.  Since Katja has been thinking about tearing the whole thing down and starting from scratch, their birthday gift of manual labor is going to save us about $5000. 

One thing I think about turning 83 is that our family becomes more important every year as we grow older as a source of social, emotional, and practical support.  We’re very proud of our grandkids, delight in their growing up.  J and our daughter-in-law K are our good friends to us as well as our closest family members.  Our group is driving back to New Orleans in two days, returning to their regular lives (as much as possible) after a summer in Half Moon Bay.  We will miss them dearly.   

J asked me how it felt to be 83, and I said it wasn’t much different from being 60 or 50 or even 40.  My poor hearing is my major sign of being in my eighties, but it’s been poor for the past two decades and it’s not nearly as bad as it might be.  I think I am more aware of being in my eighties because of the pandemic because I read in the paper every day that Katja and I are in a high-risk category.  I’m going to be extremely angry if I catch the coronavirus and die from it because that isn’t part of my game plan.  

I’ve often thought about which decade of life is the best.  When I was a kid in grade school, a pharmacist in our family drugstore named Lucien regularly told me to enjoy life because I was in the best time I would ever know.  I didn’t pay attention, but I think he had a case.  Now I think the eighties are also a strong contender, at least if one is relatively healthy and financially stable.  Since retiring twelve years ago (fourteen for Katja), we’ve been free as birds and unencumbered by job tasks, bosses, annual evaluations, and difficult colleagues.  We’re more mature, we devote ourselves to enjoyable pleasures, and life is full of contentment.  I never really expected this, and it’s a welcome surprise.  

I don’t know what my 83rd year will bring.  We have the rest of the Trump presidency, the pandemic, unrest from police brutality, the economic disaster.  My hope is that we will successfully wend our way through a chaotic world.  I wish the same for you and your family.

Love,

Dave

P.S.  The photo is my pandemic hairdo and beard, untouched since last February.  This geezer looks much more like an 83-year-old than he used to.  

Will This Actually Happen?

Dear George,

We have “sheltered in place” for four months, and that arrangement appears likely to continue indefinitely.  Our lives, while less damaged than most, remain pretty bleak.  No outings, no social gatherings, no events, no sports, no music, no art, no restaurants, not much except TV and red wine.  Recently, however, it’s been dawning on me that something stupendous and wonderful is likely to happen in the foreseeable future.  I’m referring, of course, to the November elections.  Every day more evidence becomes available that Trump has little or no possibility of being re-elected.  In my mind, the inauguration of a new president in six months.  I’m sure you’ve see the news reports.  Here is a sampling:    

87% of Americans are dissatisfied with how things are going in the country, and only 17% are proud of the country’s condition.  (late June Pew survey; brookings.edu) 

As of the end of June, only 39% approve of how Trump is handling his job as president.  (Pew survey; brookings.edu)

Younger white working class voters (ages 18-39), a major Trump constituency, tend to view Trump’s presidency as “poor” or “terrible” (46%) and are unlikely to think that he handles race relations well (35%) or brings the country together (35%).  (Pew survey; brookings.edu) 

Trump has received severe criticism for mishandling the pandemic crisis and for his responses to protests over the death of George Floyd.  (theguardian.com)

According to CNN analysts, “the toll the coronavirus will have taken on the American economy and people will be too great for him to overcome.”  (cnn.com) 

Though seniors (65 and over) favored Trump by 8 points in 2016, most surveys in June 2020 found Biden leading Trump by 2 to 8 points among seniors.  (nbcnews.com) 

A recent NY Times poll found Biden leading white women with college degrees by 39 points (compared to Hillary Clinton’s 7 point margin in 2016).  (slate.com)

In 2016 Trump won white women without college degrees by 37%.  Recent polls have found that number shrinking to single digits.  (slate.com) 

According to a June 2020 NYT poll, Biden is leading by 6 to 11 points in six battleground states that Trump carried in 2016 and that were crucial to his election: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina.  (nytimes.com)  

A late June Pew Center survey found Biden leading Trump nationally by 10 points, 54%-44%.  (brookingsedu)

It sounds almost too good to be true, and I’m immediately reminded how we celebrated Hillary Clinton’s “landslide victory” up until the polls closed on election day.  Momentous things could happen in coming months with the pandemic, the economy, race relations.  And/or Joe Biden could mess up.  Right now, however, there’s lots of reasons for anti-Trumpers to feel optimistic.  I’m determined not to die from the coronavirus while Trump is in office.  I plan to avoid all germs until 2021.  (But in the worst circumstance, if need be, I’ll hide out at home till 2025).

Love,

Dave

Skipping the Fourth

Dear George,

Thanks to the coronavirus, this may be the most un-Fourth of July since 1776.  No fireworks extravaganza on the riverfront, no band concerts or parades or community-wide picnics.  You don’t even see that many flags.  Just a lot of firecrackers that have been going off late at night for the past two weeks and terrifying neighborhood dogs.  It’s just as well.  Between Trump, the country’s failure to control the pandemic, George Floyd, the uproar over monuments to white supremacy, and economic collapse, it’s hard to dredge up any feeling of patriotism.  Here is my optimistic, if somewhat delusional thought.  Six months from now we’ll be inaugurating a new president, they’ll be distributing a vaccine to hundreds of millions, police reforms will be in place in many U.S. cities, racist monuments removed, and an increasingly successful reopening of business and industry worldwide.  Probably too much to hope for, but some of it could actually happen.

This is pretty much a lost year so far since virtually everything pleasurable has been put on hold.  On top of it all, I woke up on June first with every muscle in my body aching.  Thinking it due to the statin I take for high cholesterol, I emailed my doctor’s office and asked if I could stop the statin.  During these perilous times it’s difficult to see or talk to a doctor, so the nurse-practitioner said by return email it was o.k. though she thought it more likely to be arthritis.  My son and daughter-in-law, the two doctors in our family, tentatively diagnosed my condition as Polymyalgia Rheumatica, a mysterious but not uncommon ailment apparently linked to being older than one should be.  I relayed this to the nurse-practitioner, and she started me on a low dose of steroids (prednisone).  That helped quite a bit for the first two days, then seemed to reach a plateau.  The pain is tolerable, gets better in the course of the day, and I’m patiently waiting for it to go away altogether during my three-month steroid treatment.  

The other painful thing is that my close friend Jennifer and her partner Brian moved this week from Cincinnati to Virginia where she’s taken a high level position in the state university system.  Jennifer came here twenty years ago, and, because she lived right down the street, we walked home from work together practically every day.  That’s a lot of walks and talks, maybe 3 or 4 thousand.  This is the second time in a couple of years that one of my closest friends has moved away, and these are losses that are pretty much impossible to overcome. 

A bright spot is that our son J and grandkids V and L will be coming to visit in about a week, and they’ll stay with us for two weeks, the longest get-together we’ve ever had.  I think it’s a great opportunity.  I worried that with so many things shut down it will be hard to keep the kids entertained, but J reassured me that they are very content to spend the whole day playing video games.  I myself have never played a video game, so I’m going to ask them to give me some lessons.  At the end of their stay they’ll drive back to New Orleans, taking one or both of their dogs with them.  J asked if we might want to keep Iko in Cincinnati.  Katja’s been wishing for that for some time, but then she changed her mind, thinking back to a childhood trauma when her veterinarian dad said she couldn’t keep the new puppy he gave her because its original family wanted it back.  Dog arrangements will work out one way or the other.   This three and a half month visit from Iko and Lil Paws has been a great treat and has reminded us how much we are dog people.  

Katja sent me off to Clifton Market yesterday with a grocery list that included some challenging items, e.g., unsweetened cocoanut, cider vinegar, two avocados.  A staff person stocking shelves found the cocoanut for me, and I actually found the vinegar myself, though I had to call home to see if apple cider vinegar was correct.  Another staff person pointed to the end of the aisle where the avocados were, but unfortunately the labels were missing from the various fruit and vegetable boxes.  I picked up two dark green lumpy items shaped like small footballs and took them back to the staffer, asking her if these were avocados.  She looked at me strangely and nodded yes.  Then she asked if I would like her help in picking out which avocados would be best to choose.  I declined but sincerely thanked her for her offer.    

So we are muddling along.  Cincinnati is one of the worst places in Ohio for spread of the virus right now, so we’re trying to be as careful as possible.  Take care, wash frequently. 

Love,

Dave