Coronavirus in Springtime - Claire Drucker

[Larry Robinson]

Coronavirus in Springtime

Everywhere the signs: tiny plum blossoms blushing
on the sidewalk, clang of crimson tulips, lilac smelling
of your daughter’s skin after a bath. The sky
thick cotton candy from an earlier rain, grass
chartreuse overnight from winter’s bone. In the same
song, the invisible one, the other melody line
louder than beginnings: humans cooped
up in apartments, no money, fear devouring
breath, emptiness and loss in every corner of the planet.

I want to go back to a simpler time, when fires 
and floods caused destruction you could see: 
a scorched hillside park, metallic smoke in your mouth,
rising creek waters up to the door. Unseen, when so little 
has changed to the eye, except everything 
downside up, is the push below,
lifting us like the tiny seed to be
born in every minute, wild like the deer
again and again and again.

	- Claire Drucker