We are all islands now, invisible 
moats around us as we witness 
the weather of our isolated lives.
                    
It even seems there’s a shift
in the light, the sky more muted
than usual, yet more blue.

Some say porpoises are frolicking
in the Venice canals, and locals 
can see fish again.

This may not be true, but maybe
it is, maybe we were overdue this
reset—clearing skies over China,

most countries learning they must
help each other—though some still 
refuse, hoarding their need. 

Half alive, half dead, this tsunami
virus learns quickly, is speaking
to us in a new language, saying,

time to cull the herd, to rob from
you illusion of control, and to
wake you to the energy of love.
                        

Another ordinary day in this new pandemic world,
my only company, the television, unable to show 
anything but graphs reporting rising infections, 
deaths, and a government wrangling about how 
to relieve a horror unthinkable before this month.

I turn it off for the night, open my bedroom window, 
climb into bed and listen for the usual sound of tires 
hissing on the wet road out front, but tonight, I note
long pauses between cars, drift on the steady rain
into a restless sleep with dreams I can’t remember.

Cardboard boxes of extra food line the edges of
the living room—a room I mostly live in these
ordinary days—and crowd my current kitchen 
whose electric stove doesn’t flare with the blue 
gas flame that lit a former life.

Once I wrote a story called The Family Who Lives
in the Basement. They only came out after some 
apocalypse was over, stumbling up the cellar steps,
eyes blinded by the shock of sunlight. I don’t
remember what happened to them next.

I guess they adjusted, rebuilt their world best they
could, although it could not be the same as before,
no blueprints to follow, no brick and mortar waiting
in the side yard. But they went on, that I know.
Surely I would have had them go on! Surely . . .
                        

They have so many tasks, these days,
hovering over us as guardians, trying
to tell us all will be well whatever
wave of sorrow breaks upon us.

Sometimes they wait by the side of a 
sickbed, fanning fever away with
the gentle undulation of their wings.

Other times, they reach out to embrace 
us, welcoming some to what we call 
heaven, the cessation of suffering.

And there are human angels, selflessly 
tending us in our sickness, opening their 
hearts to fatigue, exposure, and illness, 
risking their lives and families. 

In these hard days, may we also aspire
to be angels, ministering from our 
isolation by reaching out our virtual
hands to clasp another’s, offering love.