love in the year of the plague
First published on pulitzercenter.org—October 02, 2020
for Priscilla
I feel your smile
under your homemade mask,
as we walk our Sunday talk.
And there is the matter of my thinly
worn jests that barely work. You
go along, sort of, with my free entertainment
now that the TV’s broken.
The bingo girls
aren’t out today on 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights, New York.
I wanted to share them with you—
their commitment to numbers and beads.
The kids scoot by to a vanishing point, slicing the air into prisms
and day drops that nourish our dreams: we want this to mean,
to add up to more than a time of fright and loss.
We are not big talkers when we walk, and that’s fine.
There is so much to see and ways to be seen.
Will presence be the harvest of so much death?
I am still tired and weary, like in that other poem
about my dead nephew and being on the train. But I am not
exhausted; there is soul and there are memories in store for days to come.
These are hard times; hope can easily go sour.
We can’t give them that;
they can’t take away the crystal of our smiles,
hard-won against centuries of scourge
and wanton greed. It is the tale of touch
that keeps us moving; the stories of decency
standing firm and hinting at kinder seasons to come.
Just a few blocks more, my love,
my dearest companion,
and we will turn around and walk back home, and maybe
the bingo girls will be at their spot,
giving numbers a softer game.
go to A Decisive Moment || go to The Answer is in the Room
go to Resilient Learning || go to Beyond the Twilight of Revolution