Nearly all of these poems were written in

2020, the year in which covid-19 moved from China,

to Europe, to the United States-an amazing series of

movements that changed our lives. Infections. Deaths.

Face masks, distancing, personal isolation. Racial

protests. Civic chaos. Global instability.

The burdens were great, and still are-the

lingering deleterious effects of Trump's corrupt

administration and his non-functioning Senate. The

covid-19 pandemic. The plummeting economy. The

horrideous psychological diminution of confidence,

energy, will power, and creative courage throughout

the land.

Nevertheless, in spite of these and related

burdens, the center of the human heart remains

forever alive. We love, we care, we doubt, we fear. We

scale the heights in our mind, sometimes succeed,

sometimes fail, and always aspire to realize the best,

the most hopeful, the most loving and empathic

dimensions of ourselves. That is what most of these

poems are about: the forever-shining jewel-center of

the universal human heart.