~ Delta Poetry Review ~

The French Quarter, New Orleans, Spring of 2020

With people ordered to remain at home,
The usual and customary trash
Is unavailable to rats which roam
All streets and alleys, gnash their teeth, then dash
For any scraps or spills—too often old
And insufficient. Even scavengers
Must eat and drink, and these have gotten bold
In areas now barred to revelers.
Such rodents, though, are in great danger, not
From pathogens—however borne or shared—
But from a human-generated plot:
No member of their kind is to be spared.
A baited trap is grievously alluring
When hunger, thirst, and plague are most enduring.

Continuance

"Morning by morning he wakens—"
from Isaiah 50:4

The two of us stay in Augusta as
the virus rages—most of March, too much
of April. Lent seems longer than it should,
then Easter very strange, with services
live-streamed or pre-recorded. College hoops
is cancelled for the season, Masters golf
postponed until the fall. Meals out become
impossible, yet we must eat. I buy
a small Virginia ham online. You find
a little Butterball at Walmart. Both
sustain us during Holy Week, along
with your last jar of chutney. Worries catch
us off-guard any hour, chased away
by prayer, perhaps a song.

                                  An early walk
around the college gets us going day
by day. The older regulars are there,
some leashed to friendly dogs whose names we know.
Much younger parents stroll their children at
a pace beyond what we can keep. The grounds
crew go on doing what they do—in masks
as usual. We later do some yard
work of our own. I pick up branches, pods,
and cones, pull baby pines and oaks. You pluck
wild Carolina cherries, take a pick-
ax to bold chainey briars, spray poisons on
crabgrass and anthills. Showers afterward
prove soothing.

                       Turns at laundry follow as
computers keep us focused—more or less.
We tend to correspondence, read the news,
try not to fret about diminishing
investments. You take care of clients’ deals,
our bills and taxes. I begin or fix
a poem, monitor submissions. We
anticipate deliveries, roll trash
cans to or from the curb, retrieve the mail,
attempt to be distracted by t.v.
Spring weather often draws us to the porch,
each with a glass of wine or ginger ale,
despite the pollen. Conversation helps
except when silence matters. We endure.