Poems in the time of Corona
A very quiet apocalypse
Sirens drowned
the perpetual sound
of wheels and engines
making time on the highway.
Some dire emergency.
That was yesterday,
or maybe last week,
perhaps last year.
Today the city is braced
on its couch,
strapped in for three months
of economy class turbulence,
with just a TV screen,
cheap wine, and salted peanuts,
twitching as nature
goes viral outside:
bad news kestrels
swooping on statistics,
bearing them aloft
and pronouncing doom.
Defending my keep,
I count tablets –
zinc, iron, vitamins C and D –
and scrub my palms
like the Scottish Queen,
as if she ever shopped
for bananas,
waiting for dusk,
a fluttering calm
deceptive like a ninja;
noctillionine,
the silence of the bats,
so still
I can no longer hear the road.
Support a poet. Buy a book.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems
A very quiet apocalypse
Sirens drowned
the perpetual sound
of wheels and engines
making time on the highway.
Some dire emergency.
That was yesterday,
or maybe last week,
perhaps last year.
Today the city is braced
on its couch,
strapped in for three months
of economy class turbulence,
with just a TV screen,
cheap wine, and salted peanuts,
twitching as nature
goes viral outside:
bad news kestrels
swooping on statistics,
bearing them aloft
and pronouncing doom.
Defending my keep,
I count tablets –
zinc, iron, vitamins C and D –
and scrub my palms
like the Scottish Queen,
as if she ever shopped
for bananas,
waiting for dusk,
a fluttering calm
deceptive like a ninja;
noctillionine,
the silence of the bats,
so still
I can no longer hear the road.
Support a poet. Buy a book.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems
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