A kite high in the
sky above the dark blue bay.
It thrums and displays
a bright, clean spectrum
of primary colors. They
thrum like a drunk bee.
It is very high, the
string is long. For a while it
holds our attention.
Coronavirus,
we describe what we can’t know.
It makes us human.
In a patch of sun-
light down by the water two
geese and a dark duck.
I’m glad to see them.
Coronavirus harvests
the world of humans
continuously. I
don’t get too close to the geese
who stretch their long white
necks and give alarm.
An awful bleating. The duck
observes my retreat.
Up from the whitecaps
in the wind and rain the cries
of the gulls and then
their bodies also.
I mistake them for foam flakes.
How many of us
will succumb to the
coronavirus, go un-
der the dark wave? Not
to be kissed again?
Countless, countless—-but grieve on
in the wind and rain.
Ducks ride from the top
of the wave to the bottom
over and over
they seem built for it
with you coronavirus
there is no place to hide
at the top or the
bottom you are the human
looking straight through me
Is it old age or
the coronavirus that
makes my mind hover
over uncertainties
like an orchestra at a
fermata? Please hold
the delicacy
of our first kiss at the door
a shade longer, thanks.
From a bench I watch
ducks bob in the sunny bay
under cloud bellies.
Black bits and white bits
flash randomly together.
The sight of it saves
this hour from the rest
coronavirus preserves
from fellow feeling.
No greater proof need
I than this of the beauty
of the fertile void.
A raw day, but here’s
a border of daffodils at
the edge of the bay.
Sinking docks, weathered-
grey houses, I mightcould be
quite happy living
and dying here. There
goes the calm of my daily
coronavirus
constitional.
You never know what you will
know walking around.
