A Small World Smaller Yet: A Cenotaph
by Steven R. Weiner
from obituaries in The New York Times of people who died from infection with Covid-19
The barber and his scissors died.
What she did was read, & draw, and read some more.
A hummingbird & puppeteer, she flapped her own wings.
He never left the neighborhood, but they had to bury him.
She had that sense of duty, still alive.
Famous for his cake, he added rum.
One of four in a quartet, he played the cello at their side.
She was a chaplain offering psalms to prisoners.
Two magicians cut in half, one not coming back.
A small nun in a small order, her stature rose with acts of love.
He sold encyclopedias and collected reference books, he knew.
She changed her mind a hundred times, but always fought for what seemed right to her.
She named her daughter Poet, what more could I say?
Black and beautiful, not an easy life, she showed students how to make a film.
He loved the discipline and luxury of mathematics, the equations of justice.
Most of the words she knew unspoken yet, she hitchhiked to Nice instead.
He had a gift like Michelangelo’s for sports, but never made a masterpiece.
She found a lot of hatred, but tried to shed it at her door.
A piano at his back, a welder’s torch in front of him.
She climbed mountains and fixed kidneys and life flowed through her hands.
He became a movie star, with his violin.
The steel-pan was his instrument, his home was in the metal notes.
Their passion was repairing things, and they knew how to cook.
A genius in math and magic who found a safe home in a puzzle world.
He photographed museum art, beauty copied beautifully.
A researcher with golden hands, she coaxed her results out of tubes.
He studied mosquitoes and found some good in them.
She liked raspberries the most.
Steven R Weiner is a father and husband, a recently retired nurse practitioner and hospital administrator, and a writer as well. He has published poems and a short memoir in Glassworks, the American Journal of Poetry, Ravens Perch, Café Review, Kerem, and elsewhere. His first chapbook, The Tree of Partial Knowledge, is being published by Finishing Line Press.
