Cose Fan Tutte
When worldly chaos overwhelms
Russia manipulates
democracy’s demise A plague hopscotches cross continents Lands in my Lombardian
walled garden As if paper masks protect against
corona
Thank you Mozart, for this
divine melodic distraction Operatic extravaganza of scheming lovers -
Men, as usual,
orchestrating plots
Testing fidelity, equating one night stands with mortal sin
Women, doomed to be ingenue victims or saucy perpetrator
Save your fairy tales for
the kids Everlasting love can bend to transgression
In 24 hours, an election can be
stolen
A virus can transmute and spread
A heart can break, mend and cease to beat
May no woman ever die of love. Cose fan tutte.
Ilka Scobie__ 
____________________________
Corona Time
The full Worm Moon, robins return to
feast on emerging earthworms
the Perigree moment
when lunar transit is closest to Earth,
our troubled planet where a pandemic simmers
Told to avoid crowds, I skip art fairs
Still ride the subway to school Classrooms awash in pumped sanitizer
Assiduously used by the brilliant children A stray cough or muffled sneeze
buried in itinerant elbows resounds viral doom
Jet setting virus sweeps from congested heart of an Eastern city to the flat rich
plains of Padana Pianura,
Suburban contagion circles my hometown
Today the sun rose an hour later
Daylight savings time ceaselessly springs us forward into Corona time, the
crown that no one covets
Ilka Scobie__