You got hollowed out, like rotted wood,
and my wig of blond puffed hair fell
in a clump beside you. It was winter, and you
were left out in the cold but
God hauled you in.
At least you didn’t have to join
the bitter stares, the gaunt looks,
the glaze over every lintel in
your mind now clearing.
You didn’t become a childish comedy.
You got back your breath, and
we remained in God’s good graces.
Vespers 11
The trees whispered, and the birds,
and the owl hooted,
when I put out my feelers;
my friend said, I missed your writing.
What is there to fear, is it
anything severe, this Omicron
that we have to put back our paces
speaking in gutturals.
Not lunging yet, into sun,
we stand as trees holding roots
together, trying to birth or
reveal our green inside.
Vespers 10
Perhaps the wait is soon to be over.
A phantasmagoria of spending
arose entirely out of this pandemic
was just a surrogate for travel;
extreme domestication.
My soul is smelling of dead vegetation.
This fraying of nerves is soon to heal.
Attending to words, then a distrust of them.
A visitation from the sun, a playfulness
with shadows. What can prefigure the future
but time present and time past–
Eliot’s words on my page.
You read my litany and I really should
rein that in, shouldn’t I, holding the past at bay.
Yet shine a torch, that’s what I’m wont to do.
I read your words too, full of humor.
For us, there is only the trying,
didn’t he say. The rest is not our business.
Vespers 9
I come to you as fruit some days.
When you slice it, it is brick-hard yet
there’s a brittleness to it. But the taste,
probably not too pleasant is it, not quite
the manna you’d hoped for.
Things aren’t too bad in our part.
But is it? Still at loggerheads
with a virus and not going anywhere.
We’d been taught not to be blase
about all that now.
Oh quiet, very quiet.
Bite the fruit, taste it–
like all our antiquated selves.
Vespers 8
In place of little yelping noises,
I decided to leave the words out to dry
on racks, as if they’re to be pickled later
or if not, buried in a bog.
Well, you signalled for silence didn’t you,
and all this while when nothing seemed to stir
my soul, there was something going on.
What it added up to, I have no idea.
I watched Downton Abbey, in the meanwhile,
splinters down my throat. But good to know
there’s a capacity for suffering
and then a celebration of sorts.
You know I try don’t you?
Don’t believe for one moment that
darkness prevails, when the world shall
turn, improve still by leaps and bounds.
Vespers 7
I’m good, was all she said, gradually
eclipsing like the moon.
She’d found sanctuary somewhere,
ending up slightly to her right.
Some days I could see her getting nearer
while completely hemmed in.
We’re all in a fine sort of mess.
I think godless is a state, like being
trapped in a Stephen Dobyns poem,
where the dead surrounds you,
the silence is immeasurable.
Everywhere the virus is gaining ground.
The whole country toes the line.
We stand perfectly still, the virus
does its snake dance.
Vespers 6
The world had merged into an all-pervading
abnormalcy, so I wonder at deaths
–vast wings bearing up the deceased’s soul,
the body a rag of bones;
wouldn’t that theory have something
divine in it.
What’s this feeling of separation yet
you remained, working like a leaven.
So I’ll feel as many transmutations
as light. Things kept their formal shape,
despite a frail veneer;
words have a shape here too.
Myself not yet laid to rest, hanging on
to anything, thrashing in water till
a long enough twig floated by.
When you pulled on the other end,
a feeling of friendship settled,
staunch, even substantial.
Vespers 5
We walked in silence, a comfortable one.
You brushing against, prodding me,
which used to annoy, set my teeth
on edge, perhaps it’s just a push and pull
activity, all our human relationships.
What is the state of your heart,
the question on my lips, yet it evaded.
You don’t seem lost in gloom, don’t
seem anything but cheerful,
in a halo of light that
drowned everything else. So I thought,
placing you in a place of permanence,
like a gray rock. Until now our fates diverged
with the suddenness of a rocket.
Into each of us, a new world.
Vespers 4
We’re getting more and more remote,
friendship rumbling and dried away.
No more wish to sleep on it
yet sleep, when it comes, will take away
all consciousness of this world, take us
to other worlds. Why is that, you asked.
No answer of course.
We will take things as they come.
Exaltation diminished, glimpses through the rift,
like a faint hum or a long siren, glimmered.
As humans, growing less and less
dissimilar as the pandemic laid us bare.
I said that, lying through the teeth.
This is what I do, glowering at you.
What a pathetic earnestness,
looking at old photographs as if
first noticing the stars, me looking
sideways, you biting into a chip,
our youthful glances seared
into an old camera.
Vespers 3
Another lockdown–we all rasped together.
A wave of noise, does it matter?
Will we get it blow for blow?
What do words mean when pockets speak louder,
and lives, where the heart is thumping,
and truth, stippled on it.
I see the foot of a sleeper.
Overpowered by tipsiness perhaps,
to drown out, in enjoyment, to
paralyse horrors rising from the abyss.
He didn’t rouse fully yet, rough
breath rattling in his throat.
Someone Like Her 