Consider the fullness, the halfness,
the bare dented space on my ring finger
as I hold the pint, the sun
and the foam sliding
down the insides of my glass.
O regard the Great Pandemic!
The maskers and the anti-vaxers,
the moats we’ve dug around ourselves –
it’s far from over, but nevertheless
when I see her walk across the parking lot
to the picnic table where I shiver
in the late April afternoon sunshine…
no, strike that, not nevertheless, it’s because
the pandemic lingers, keeps its fingers
smudging all the glasses of hope that we hold –
when I see her walking toward me, cold and
carrying her body’s betrayal in her gait
(even though she went so far as to rend the flesh
where the invader lay, to disguise her own body
so it would cast a cold eye, so that it would pass by),
when I see her walking this way,
I stand and wrap my two good arms
around her shoulders, standing in the moat –
through her coat I feel her heart stuttering against her ribs
as she silently weeps, a bird that flutters and seeks
a castle window but I am a lone stone wall so
we just stand and stand there in the fading day
while all the kingdom’s souls
drink their beers and scroll,
one option after another,
all the time in the world,
the sun and the foam
sliding down my glass.
Halfway North 