Pandemic Poems - APRIL 2020
Carole Stone
stonec@mail.montclair.edu
stonec@mail.montclair.edu
Bio Note: I am Distinguished Professor of English, emerita, Montclair State University.
My most recent poetry book is HURT, THE SHADOW. I have poems forthcoming in Crossroads and the
NJ Journal of Poets.
Author's Note: Like all of us, I am confined to quarters. I spend much time at my computer frequently looking out the window at my backyard in suburban New Jersey. Thus, this poem.
Author's Note: Like all of us, I am confined to quarters. I spend much time at my computer frequently looking out the window at my backyard in suburban New Jersey. Thus, this poem.
Locked Up
Overnight the daffodils appear.
A cardinal, red as a Mexican sunset
flies through the pines. The two
biggest deer I’ve ever seen
munch on budding tulips.
Animals free, humans locked up,
isolation could last through the summer.
I watch PBS news, take my temperature,
cross out my April birthday dinner date,
remember my ecstatic nimble girlhood
when I played touch football with boys.
My next-door neighbor knocks and asks,
Need anything? She carefully stays
outside the glass door.
©2020 Carole Stone
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