In the Time of Virus

Series of poems exchanged between poets via e-mail

# 8

When my wife and I first started dating 

it was long-distance

by phone, text, and Skype

often poems sent back-and-forth

Monthly opportunities for face-to-face

and limb-to-limb connection

enabled by hours spent entombed in airports and 

suspended strapped-in above the clouds

everything still

but for the soothing hum of jet engines 

I wanted no earphones, no distractions 

but a book of poems or a novel

and to look out at mountains 

of swirling meringue

and faintly hear 

the Music of the Spheres

Now we are together

alone in our desert home

with our cats

The world beyond we glimpse remotely

through phone, text, tv, Zoom

While out the window

spring bunnies

nesting quail

all manner of birds at the feeders

The occasional bobcat lopes through

silent, deadly as a virus,

magnificent 

—John Roche