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Pandemic
As if the star clusters of the Milky Way
were each a nation on the night sky’s map
serenely blinking, touching gleam to gleam
until a few knots turn angry red
then yellow or sputter black
and dying pull
thousands of memories
into their holes and like the rest of us stretch
new arms to keep touching for only
in constellations
do stars form stories
stories of how they belong.
** ** ** **
How numerous the world the human
species how ripe
for annihilation we are: masked,
pocked, weaponed—at last
the zombie apocalypse: ‘going viral.’
Chasing news and rumors, deep
shock of behavioral change. A week’s
cascade—one e-mail
then the next—flattening Spring’s fat
agenda: all those celebrations planned.
** ** ** **
This loss and that sacrifice, small when stacked
against the ER’s blue blizzard of gloves and gowns,
gurneys beeping into a morgue. I embrace
renunciation, this purple Lent of solitude,
abhor the squawking crow—
its black untethered feathers falling.
** ** ** **
One month in, I pass the research institute’s
astrophysics video screen, where Hubble’s
remote galaxies once spun—
those pulsing clustered worlds being born—
and I see the screen is white.
Blank.
It’s just me—
a little bleak—
and this world,
this here, this now.
How the Doctors Prepare
One must stay motivated or slip. A slip
could be fatal. One must stay motivated: who
do you love could die? Who, if you die, would
mourn? Change or die — this anthem of change
managers—and here we are. Stop celebrating
gathering shopping learning—our hunger
for the world is post- poned. Who is tempted? Who
squanders caution or love? In them we find our danger.
This Lent, we are Renunciates. We have given up much.
It is a kind of prayer. We offer it for one another.
Orpheus
“The Underworld is made of men’s memories and the ruins of their habits.”
— Jean Cocteau
When Death loves you, there is nothing
more to want.
Deft, she pulls on her black
gloves and motions you: attend. Speech
is useless, but song—song….
Whose
dream are you? Into whose vision
do you descend? Singing in your slop and mire…
Sound bells
the canvas
of your little boat
and you race along
a glassy face.
When singing stops
the water blackens. There
adrift with you,
Death—
amorous—
her fingers
bid you pluck
each stanza, each
bleating quatrain.
Good Friday
What had been promised?
That the light would return
The land blush green
The antibiotics restore
The fevered amnesiac
Shivering in her pool of sweat
Now gasping
For more water
What had been promised?
A reliable test for the invisible
Contagion, a world
Without masks, the kind
Of place we might walk
Arm in arm, even
Embrace when
Meeting the dead.
What to Do From Confinement
This Spring’s a wet catalogue of flowers
addendum of birds, a lovely time
to have to stay home.
Bewick’s wren gnatcatcher bushtit
I see your eyes watching glass- black
from the leaf litter shadow ranch
from under the smoky sage stalks
smoky
as in smell earth green
gone silver how you hide
goldfinch towhee
heart
of one who waits and learns
that she must wait again so near
to crescendo the final act
chord, world interrupted in fact
no cymbals clash
I am in
suspended time everything’s thicker
I feel selfish I languish these mockingbirds
repeat a subtle chase
who
are they fooling? I want
another nest in the neighborhood
warbler
vireo flycatcher I wish I could
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