Ken Beckwith

At the End of Covid Ken Beckwith

Thirty-four poems, at the end of Covid. From Uto-Aztecan and Mayan grammar, to the mirror illusion of progress, denial of the gems of distant people, and recollecting after the pandemic. Ken Beckwith envisions the frayed edges of a fabric discontinued mid-frame-introducing, or rather, re-introducing the long-disowned snag whose rejection tripped our stepping in the first place. A gathering of drops, running together to make cloud curtains, over a desert. Thunder of foot-steps breaking like pneumatic cylinder tree logs, floating down the river back to our needing fingers. "Endings are beginnings are endings are beginnings. At the End of Covid: Returning to Before highlights the scary-beautiful core of transformation when one is all with nothing and everything at once. A place of magic and language and magical language and language as magic that creates past, present, and future with a single stroke. It serves as a nexus of contemplation; it is poetry, it needs no justification. And it does not ask for it." -Robert N Gomez, BA Psychology and MA Counseling