Margaret Koger
Hard By the Quarantine
The day is a locked cabinet, a ferry housing the hours as they chime their insistent passage.
Hard by the lilacs breed perfume, sap drenching the pollen air. Here and there a chickadee
pleads his randy case. And the keys beneath my fingers con words into being.
Words to ease novel virus fear. My fingers stroke, hard by the hours, stitch tales of wild remorse. They want to say, Oh words, but find no comment.
When contacts fold, will new ones follow? Is spring the harbinger of death? When you cough and the lilacs have wilted, what next?
What you leave out will always be missing.