Rosa, Born During a Pandemic - Barry Denny

[Larry Robinson]

Rosa, Born During a Pandemic

On Zoom an infant smiles:
It was months before we visited you live and three weeks 
more before we could hold you. My granddaughter limitless, 
without aspiration, until (wearing your owl face pajamas) you set 
your mind to crawl, wandering off to explore 
the contours of an abstract dome shaped toy, popup board book 
and rubber giraffe that squeaks. Often you taste 
your toys before your fingers groom their surface.
Traveling from room to room dangers abound and attract—
as if you were a 5-foot, 10-inch point guard challenging
a big man or a second lieutenant contemplating an action 
rather than a cause—wires adhered to walls, water boiling 
on the stove, pointy knobs on draws. Is anything ever known 
before encountered?

In a photo album an infant smiles:
My parents proclaimed they’d wake me any time,
day or night and I’d smile. This was World War Two 
when American Jews sought relief any way they could.
Dad, are sociological explanations any use coming to terms
with how fearful and constrained a kid I was? Of course, it’s imagination reconstructing what I know in my guts. Memory unreliable
before language. If I were permitted to crawl about, allowed 
to explore and run my fingers around the contours of objects 
that might break, we may never have been mutually humiliated 
when I was unable to bait a hook on a fishing line or was late learning 
to tie my shoes. What is the ratio between fear and contentment, numerator inborn— denominator inculcated by those who love you?  Yes, it was when I first discovered (in the third grade) that I was 
the fastest runner for my age that I smiled—knowingly. 
How fortunate to grow up human! 

Iphone in hand, I snap a photo of a cormorant, 
wings spread wide, aloft a pole 
left from an abandoned pier: 
Rosa, this is dawn during the pandemic. 
I’d have thought a cormorant 
would dry its wings exclusively 
when a day’s heat approached. 
5:30 AM and already 
I am granted a vision. 
A creature, heart shining in the dark,
presenting its essence, before diving 
beneath the surface
of the water in search of fish.   
This morning before the sun has risen, 
the park along the East River is empty,
the sky orange, cradling a cloud above red as a lobster.
I (who hardly ever took a photo pre-Covid) capture 
water taxies and barges on the river. 
		This is what I do during the pandemic: 
Walk the city, snapping images of everything 
that drifts my way carrying thoughts that ripple
from scenes into poems. 

	- Barry Denny