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.