Our worlds have been reduced to screens,
especially those whose quarantine
means solitary confinement—
connections to lives other than our own.
TVs. Laptops. Tablets. Phones.

And windows.
My living-room looks onto
bare branched trees,
the stubbornest in the neighborhood,
refusing to give into spring
when I so long for life and green.
One bastard maple denies a single bud.
Past it the flagpole’s stem upholds
always a single sad bloom:
the flag at half-mast.
Beyond that, at the curb
a red bicycle’s been chained
to a no-parking sign
for more than a month. 
Who is its owner? Are they OK?
Will they ever ride again?
The bike is tethered as we’re tethered,
the invisible we,
a world in community
as we’ve never known it before,
all these invisible people,
the ones whose homes share walls with mine,
unseen delivery men at the other side of my door.

Past the street, a sky beyond, 
the Empire State Building waits for evening
when it beams red thanks 
to those who fight what feels like war,
the enemy invisible too
though it may take on the face of strangers
or of those we trust.

And so our screens are not just views
but also barriers.
Trump promised his followers a wall.
Now we’re all behind walls,
the fortresses of homes and apartments.
Our masks.
One day I allow myself a walk outside.
I sit on a bench to drink in the sight 
of daffodils, unabashedly bare faced
while I’m barricaded behind my cloth protection,
imprisoned by the fog that 
steams my glasses with each exhalation.
A masked stranger passes, waves,
says “Have a good day.”
I almost cry. 
I’ll never see that face,
never unmask that paunchy Zorro,
that Lone Ranger.
I too am a Lone Ranger,
though I don’t range far.

Somehow from behind our barriers,
we all reach out.
We Zoom poetry readings and yoga classes.
We say “Keep safe.”
We tape rainbows to our windows.
We clap. 

From our Queens apartments
each night at seven,
my invisible neighbors
bang pots and cheer.
I chime my Tibetan prayer bells.
By 7:05 the streets grow quiet
except for the sirens.
We close our windows,
retreat behind our barriers,
return to our screens.
                        

There were days when the women cast their nets
from the cliffs
and caught nothing but wasps.

There were days when the birds
thrashed broken on the ground,
their songs full of rust.

There were nights when three moons came,
or none,
and the little brothers sharpened their teeth
on the big brothers’ bones.

There were dawns when the stones 
grew mouths, their complaints unceasing,
and we feared to leave our houses,
for their contempt stole our will.

For three months, the sun refused to rise,
it hated us so.
But less than we hated ourselves.  

Our city was a red city,
our land a dusty land,
our hearts thirsty hearts.

We had birthed it, 
this monster world,
and we hated it
but it was all the world we had.  

So we rose
and we cast our nets
and we closed our ears 
to the stones’ grievances
and the birds’ screams.
We drank from the bloody rivers.

And we sowed the dust
with dead seeds and promises.