When social distancing, how far:
the mirage of others, ombre of their vanishing points
like—and only like—a hem stained dark,
dementing the spectrum with evanescent egg wash, cockleburs.
Born into mistrust, each breath’s a crisis of proportionate air.
Love’s poles shift as the bar goes dark. By the bins, rabbits feed,
hop neat through the mobile greensward.
There’s iron at the planet’s heart to magnetize more than mineral—
the over-under of six feet.
I must speak with you. I can’t until the air unmasks.
Windows shine their blued elsewhere.
Click here to read Carol Alexander on the origin of the poem.
Image: “E la luna busso…” by Alessandro Giangiulio, licensed under CC 2.0.
Carol Alexander is the author of the poetry collections Environments (Dos Madres Press) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press). Her chapbook Bridal Veil Falls is published by Flutter Press. Alexander's poems appear in a variety of anthologies and in journals such as The American Journal of Poetry, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Denver Quarterly, Hamilton Stone Review. One, Pif, Southern Humanities Review, Sweet Tree Review, Terrain.org and Third Wednesday. Her latest collection, Fever and Bone, will appear this January from Dos Madres Press.
Latest posts by Carol Alexander (see all)
- Social Distancing - January 17, 2021
Hit all the right notes. Thank you for expressing thus experience so well.
Thanks— here’s to a time when this poem and all it represents has become a cautionary memory!