Michael Ansara
Pandemic Poem: The First Months
This morning there was one
Particular, woodpecker,
The scarlet slash on his cap
A flash as his head beat impossible time
To the rhythm of this one day.
As time passed to a slowing,
I wanted the moment to last
Past news and noise,
Absorb the opening sky,
The bowing trees, the feel of you.
#
Today bulbs pushed up green shoots.
A defiant daffodil burst into yellows,
Reliable rite of early spring.
I crave their certainty.
#
100 million Americans washing hands
Singing happy birthday, twice.
A cough. A sneeze. A portent. Fear
Settles into the chest.
And yet,
In Majorca,
Police on their rounds
Stop to serenade the housebound.
In Italy,
Neighbors on balconies sing opera
Together, arias cascading
down empty streets
Like a spring river.
#
Contagion derivation:
Con: With, together & tangere: touch
Fact of the body.
To bring something within;
Moral corruption,
Mortal corruption,
To spread to another the unclean
And unseen, a rumor,
A touching.
To be touched.
#
A very small percentage
Of a very large number
Equals
A stilled sax, silent
Piano, abandoned
Mop and pail, unused
Latex gloves and nursing clogs
Permanently parked truck, empty
Shift, unanswered phone.
Lonely stethoscope.
Long-Term Care Facilities become
Oxymorons
The Great White Way
Dark and silent.
#
The doors are locked.
Fingers separated by hard glass.
The living cannot say goodbye.
A branch breaks.
A bird’s wing snaps
The dying cannot say goodbye.
#
In some altered states
Curbside pickup.
Brisk business.
Unseen enemy.
Cold, blued comfort.
Do not trust your neighbor,
Be prepared
To shoot
The stranger
#
I want to praise
Those who work,
Those who cloaked
In the bulky gowns
Of their fear, still rush in,
Tend the infected.
Those who, unrecognized,
So often black and brown,
Inadequately protected
Without all the gear,
Clean and scrub,
Stock and drive,
Those who deliver.
Those who have no choice.
Those who, unlike me, cannot sit
Idle within their grief and rage.
#
Sequestered,
Our quicksilver deceit
Of separation is burned
Away. Illusion
That we exist bounded,
Unburdened, is scattered
Like the black murmuration
Of starlings startled
By the explosion
At sunset.
#
I want to go out of my mind
For an instant or two.
Leave my body at its most
Alive. Bury my grief within
You. Become ravenous.
Consume comfort and relief.
#
The weather warmed, springing
Riotous patches of new color
As if to show the earth
Does not care.
Then, shockingly, it snowed,
Fat, frozen flakes,
Falling like grief
Everywhere, muffled.
#
The spring sprung brook
Gurgled and burbled.
The lichen licked stone walls
Stood silent, steadfast.
The slender birches swayed,
Staying bent and bowed.
My two dogs released,
Ran and romped.
All as it always was.
All was as it always was.
Nothing was the same.
