Bucolic Once In The Quarantine
Way past its nine lives life lives
on the ledge of a whining silence.
On the pane a finch opens the book of hymns
between time thumbed pages ten and eleven.
It means morning walks towards
the last phase of the plague quarantine
where the veil thins, and there it will
dwindle, spin to stare at us for one more time.
I avoid the clock. Read the cat's tail.
A finch sits and swings somewhere
where I can both see and unsee its being.
Nine lives gone, life reads on without perusing.
.
A Storm During The Pandemic
Cops dredge out the flesh of the loss
from a flooded pond. The corpse sports
electricity in its quivering limbs. I pass the scene
wondering if the pandemic exterminated it
or if the cyclone did. Other things also croon within -
The chronicle of the father who went to bring water
after the quake in Turkey. Perhaps it happened in
some other country after the Reich exploded.
We know how they thought the father a thief, and
how they shot some leads.
I pass the dead and the drifters. My gnarled fingers
hold my shopping bag, and my grey cells,
for no reason, hums Havah Nagila.
Two naked boys skimming something in
with a couple of broken branches turn their heads.
Changes During Quarantine
Two coveys of petunias
talk about the absence between.
In those recesses dwell the saints.
The silence they susurrate
perfects the chanting.
I pluck the ones cerise
to bedeck his grave.
The adornment disfigures the crud.
In these too dwell some saints.
