Coronavirus Time - Some Poems

Some friends liked this first poem, and asked if I'd written any others during this challenging time, and so I'm throwing these out into cyberspace.  I'd be interested in comments, particularly critical.  (All poems © Peter Goodman 2020.)






    WHAT IS LOST

where butterflies fluttered last week,
tattered blue petals still cling.
On a park bench in Rome,
where old men loudly enjoyed
familiar arguments each day,
an old man sits alone.  An alleycat
saunters to the worn pewter bowl
among the flowers
and finds it dry.  When he looks up,
no old woman waves from the window.

These times
are just like always
but more so.

The boy pets his dog, worried.  Mom says
dogs can’t get the virus, but he heard on TV
some tiger named Boris got sick in London.
Grandma comes out of her bed room,
her TV still on, and asks him,
“What is it
they’re all so exercised about?” 
He thinks she’s testing him
as she used to drill him
on his time tables (“multiplication
tables!” she insisted, her eyes
drilling into him),
but the next morning
she asks the same question,
calling him by his father’s name.

The nurse, exhausted, steps
into an empty storeroom, for a moment.
Silence. 
She rests her head against a cabinet.
In an old war movie, she thinks,
she’d have a cigarette,
even in a hospital.  Her head
spins from all the dying, the tears,
people gasping for breath, their fears.
Four more hours tonight, then sleep –
fitful sleep, dreams of screams
and pleading faces she can’t save.

Soon after dawn
in their garden,
the old man with his coffee
and the old woman with her tea
hold hands.

                                                                          [-26 April]


These others are in the order I'd written them:

         DISTANCES

the birds, undisciplined,
play together in the fruit trees.
the outlaw breeze
keeps touching our faces,   
the dog races
well within six feet,
offering neck and ears,
promising these surfaces
are perfectly safe.

this morning the Senator said,
 “This is a once-in-a-lifetime
event,” but we know more
viruses lurk in animals,
waiting their chance – and nations
experiment with bio-attacks.
i asked.  he readily agreed, said,
“constant preparedness is essential.”

perhaps
this will be life. 
Will we remember hugs, and the crowds
at baseball games, as our forebears
recalled the dreams and waltzes           
of 1913 – or as “Indians”
recalled 1491?

meanwhile, dolphins and swans
return to Venice canals, and
ducks play in Rome’s fountains.
and, for a moment, we all
slow down, learn solitude.
maybe we long
for community, enough
– finally – to all get along.

a friend calls.  walking
into town, he hopes perhaps
we can meet for coffee
on some park bench.  

                                                                   [--19 March]


    FLATTENING THE CURVE   

at least our poems,
gloved, masked, but hardly antiseptic,
can venture out,
and mingle, shy speculations dancing
with rude portraits, Rodin’s lovers
buying chocolates
from Joe’s gloved goldfinch,
false answers vigorously scrubbed
from earnest questions, young and old.

alone out there, they take on
lives of their own, rent
furnished rooms, pursue
intense discussions under
bare light bulbs thick with buzzing
flies and foolish moths, as indifferent
to us (dead or isolated
or watching spring roll in
onto Maine’s rocky coast)
as we to Victorian ancestors
whose names we never learned.
   
                                                                        [-24March]  [If this needs explanation, our regular twice-a-month Thursday evening poetry workshops ceased, for the moment, and we tried sending each other some poems by email.]


     SHELTERED IN PLACE

to be marooned
on some internal island
buffeted by the winds
of death and uncertainty?
  
it is always so.  like a mountain
masked by mists today,
sun-bathed tomorrow.

death
is our shadow,
invisible
on cloudy days.

can I see clearly
what’s right
before me, and is
nothing
like what’s before me,
knowing
i know nothing?

                                                                            [-7April]



    L’S ADVOCATE

or is
“pandemic” nature’s way
to prune and clean?
Look at the riot of new growth
where we pruned that fig!
Think of the ten-year flood
sweeping down Little Bear
Canyon, clearing away
old trees, garbage, campsites
to make way for the new.
When science cheats nature
by prolonging weakened lives,
Nature replies.  But would I shrug
and wave goodbye, smiling
as it washed me away next week?

                                                                [early April]  [This was written before 14 April, but I'm not sure when.  It remained untitled, just starting with "or is." until I came up with one just now.  The L, of course, refers to Lucifer; but I'm still not happy with the title.]

the dog sits watching
streets without cars, skateboarders,
cats, folks walking dogs.


                                                        [- 16April]