Some smudged plexiglass remains,
having been more difficult to erect
and therefore more bother to remove.
Outside, the windswept tumbleweed
of a facemask, its torn elastic bands
flapping their tired fronds against
the asphalt with the other winter trash.
Refrigerator trucks rededicated
to the chilled storage and transport
of anything but the human deceased.
Small town campus ice arena
bearing the slightest scars of cot-legs
and privacy screens, the strange dream
of soldiers fading to fragments.
A ghost of myself, figment out of phase,
measures distances, haunts the far edges
of what bustles and churns, a clamorous
bullying desire for “normalcy”
almost passing for “normalcy.”
And of course, the counted dead,
the dead uncounted. The brutal
and insufficient arithmetic. The long
and the short, the landmine damage
lurking in bodies, biding time
until the next innocent footstep.
And of course, the virus, not cc-d
on the report of its demotion
from emergency to some other rank,
still lingers on the perpetual threshold:
overstayed guest or one just arriving?
It’s hard to know any more, if we ever could,
the coming from the going.