Pandemic Poem
The wind is howling outside,
You can hear the treetops
respond,the window creak
and if you look
the world is in motion, swaying
Humanity and our days change
But nature is relatively constant
Now, green and verdant
Bursting past spring to a Northern California summer
like it has for thousands of years
before we settled here, along the river.
The birds and the grass don’t know
that we no longer congregate in groups
we no longer sit together in halls
or ball parks or concerts or theaters.
We no longer wander museums, scratching
our heads at modern art
and we don’t ride the train or the subway or
the metro anymore
We haven’t gotten close enough to
someone strange
to sniff their hair
or to observe the color of their eyes and how the
rim around the light caramel brown is darker
and how there are chips of color
scattered on the iris
The squirrels, the geese, the fish don’t know
and they don’t hardly care
even if they could put a name on it.
But the wind still blows, pushing clouds
across a wide western sky.
The trees continue to lean and sway.
The river water continues its rushing journey.
They are older than us. Here before. Here after.
How small our discomfort is
when viewed against this backdrop.
A backdrop of sky and stars
clouds, wind, sun setting
where it always has.
How small we are.
How big everything else.
How big.
It will endure.
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