CHAPBOOK CONTEST WINNER Rick Leddy

Love in the Time of the Coronavirus

Flat Earth

I am flattening the curve

Staying home

Ready to chew my foot off

A coyote in a trap

Brimming with bad metaphors

I have flattened the excuses

For not doing all the things

I should have done years ago

Too busy

Too tired

Too stressed

From the day-to-day

Oh, I would have done that

But, you know

Work

And

Life

And

Netflix

Damn you, Covid-19 

You have laid bare my procrastination

Added hours to the day

As I sit at home

Thinking of new rationalizations

Conjuring up different lies

Searching for innovative distractions

Sharpening my cynicism

As I tap words on my phone

Believing 

Really believing

I am doing something

Backyard

We sit in our backyard

Staring at the fence

Leaves and limbs shadow puppet against redwood

We feel the darkness that light does not touch

We sit side-by-side looking forward

Saying nothing 

Watching the absence dance

Hoping to feel

Anything

Waiting for the shadows 

To fade away

World Poetry Day

Today 

Is World Poetry Day

Did you know that?

I didn’t feel much like writing one

Does it really matter

in these lockdown days?

Sitting on my steps

I watch

People walking their dogs

Riding bikes in thin-spread lines

Stopping, chatting 

Saying hello while waving at safe distance

How are you? Stay healthy

Letting the cool spring day envelope them

As they stroll on shadowed sidewalks

Looking forward

Finding light where they can

And I realized

World Poetry Day really doesn’t matter

Because poetry surrounds me

Every day

Pandemic Haiku

You coughed just once, love

And I eased away from you

Imperceptibly

Home

Home a hearth

Where radiant embers once fell

Bright sparks escaping roaring fires of laughter

The light casting joyful shadows 

A thousand years 

And a moment ago

Home once a refuge

I could see in your eyes

We peer from behind sheer curtains

The windows outside filled

with imprisoned silhouettes 

Staring back at us

Home a memory

Sometimes beautiful chaos

Where we gathered together

Fearless

Hugging without consequence

Finding strength in numbers

Home now changing

Transfigured each day

Mutating 

Into something different

We look into the rooms of yesterday

Only to find them haunted

Home still home

Our fingers intertwined

Two hands in prayer

Genuflecting before the altar of once was

Yearning for the return of the every day 

Missing the years taken for granted

Love in the Time of the Coronavirus

Tell me, would you stand beneath my window?

Your masked breath caught in a contained mid-swoon.

Flesh under gloves white as the falling snow.

Singing songs of loss to the pallid moon.

Would you look into these panicking eyes?

Walk bravely down the toilet paper aisle.

Fight side-by-side, find where the water lies.

Hand not in mine in blissful denial.

Can we make love without touching at all?

Groaning loud passion into waiting sleeves.

Shuddering endings to our FaceTime calls.

Sanitizing screens for the next reprieve.

Will you dare to kiss me without a mask?

Would you die for love, Love - that’s all I ask

Dawn

It is the silence

The still that encompasses anticipation

So quiet I can hear the ring in my ears

The world has hit mute

Branches sway in pantomime

This television aquarium life

filled with colors swimming in heatless beauty

The streets without movement empty of context

I want to speak

But am afraid the fragile sky will shatter

Time has slowed in the gelatinous air

Memories caught in the glacial flow 

Trapped nostalgia haunting each step

I am a ghost

Breathing dust and doubt

My shadow preceded me in long movement against the pavement 

Proving I am not invisible

That I am solid enough

to block the emerging light

As the church bell tolls

Ushering in the newborn day

Dotted Lines

I fantasize

Six feet from you

As we form a dotted line 

Waiting to grocery shop

Your thin hands are so alluring beneath purple nitrile gloves

Your eyes seductively dart above your Covid burka

I can see you are a wild one, too

Moving within five feet of me like that

I close my eyes

Seeing us

Dare I even think it?

Perhaps just three feet apart

Being scandalous

Our shadows practically touching

As we stage whisper 

Maybe there is toilet paper today

Do you Zoom?

Oh, wouldn’t that be delicious?

We are at the beach together

The sun bleaching our eyes

The salty breeze sterilizing our skin 

You standing high on the pier

While I wave from the beach

Until sunset fades our ardor

I imagine a smile is cloistered behind your cotton armor

I can hear you shouting goodbye

And it is music smothered by a pillow 

The line is staccato molasses

Rush hour on the 5

Standing, standing, standing

Then going forward just enough

To make us believe this will end

One day

I wonder what you are thinking

Perhaps you are thinking of me

As we plod chain gang ahead

Urged forward by underpaid bosses

I want to say it will be better

Some day 

By the way

What is your name?

But you are ushered into the store

Raptured into the fluorescent aisles

And I am left behind

Still waiting for salvation

Cathedrals

We are prodigals returning 

glances of solace

Sharing the unexpected vow

of a slow fall

None of us know

What we will breathe tomorrow

What whispers we will tell each other

to keep the faith

I walk down the sidewalk

Daring the day to take me

You roundabout in the vacant street

Waving incantations against tomorrow

We understand now what it is like

to build cathedrals bringing light to darkness

Stone hands reaching to the heavens

Bells tolling, echoing to the vacant sky

We pray for permanence in a shifting world

We speak in tongues 

Only we understand 

A smile, a sigh, a short-lived laugh

The breeze on our faces a hymn

The shadows genuflecting on the grass

The sun still here

After all

We will…

A blanket covers new Spring light

As earth bursts forth

Unaware that the world has changed

The spinach and lettuce grow side-by side

Blissfully unaware of six-foot spaces

Clouds spot white against the cerulean sky

Dark and light

Casting shadows on our shadowed world 

The roses reach up 

Rising, worshipping the waiting dawn

Spring flows in and around us as we huddle

Ignoring calamity with quiet disregard

Exhaling the defeat of winter

All of it everywhere, everything

So quiet and yet so fierce

Hope embracing us, tenacious and enduring

Change breathing change 

The silence surrounding us whispering

We will endure

We will endure