The world this early morning
is muffled through gauze and I see
a single cormorant on the wide
flat morning bay.
The vast surface
of the bay slides, like loose skin,
right to left,
west to east, and out to sea.
The favored way is to walk alone and keep well your distance. Wear a mask and cross the street
if anyone comes along.
Look! the cormorant’s
come up again
and is floating,
dark against the silver
water, and then disappears again.
They’ve put up warning signs all along the top of the seawall where there’s a path: keep six feet apart,
cover your nose and mouth. (Hope for a good wind, I say, to blow invading viruses away).
A knot in the fork
of a driftwood log,
skinned and bleached
on the rocks,
looks sometimes
like a perching Osprey.
The promenade is empty, as if it had been erased. No one comes here now, they’re all afraid of the sickness in the air. Can an infection live for long in salty water? Is it a danger to the wide blue placid sea?
Two cormorants, now,
and a duck
and THEN!
a surprise dozen cormorants,
quick blackened
silhouettes against the gray
in formation
flying fast and low
The crucial thing about this disease is! there are only consequences, there’s nothing to be seen or smelled or heard or felt causal in this mass attack as if an army of ten trillion ghost soldiers armed with death had come ashore and were filling in the spaces everywhere.
over the sea
in the opposite direction
of its pull, now and then,
the bay’s surface stretches
and pushes toward me
the smallest lip of water,
up over the stones,
whispering, “Hush.”
Author Bio:
Charles Tarlton is a retired teacher now writing poems full time. He lives in old Saybrook, Connecticut with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter.
is muffled through gauze and I see
a single cormorant on the wide
flat morning bay.
The vast surface
of the bay slides, like loose skin,
right to left,
west to east, and out to sea.
The favored way is to walk alone and keep well your distance. Wear a mask and cross the street
if anyone comes along.
Look! the cormorant’s
come up again
and is floating,
dark against the silver
water, and then disappears again.
They’ve put up warning signs all along the top of the seawall where there’s a path: keep six feet apart,
cover your nose and mouth. (Hope for a good wind, I say, to blow invading viruses away).
A knot in the fork
of a driftwood log,
skinned and bleached
on the rocks,
looks sometimes
like a perching Osprey.
The promenade is empty, as if it had been erased. No one comes here now, they’re all afraid of the sickness in the air. Can an infection live for long in salty water? Is it a danger to the wide blue placid sea?
Two cormorants, now,
and a duck
and THEN!
a surprise dozen cormorants,
quick blackened
silhouettes against the gray
in formation
flying fast and low
The crucial thing about this disease is! there are only consequences, there’s nothing to be seen or smelled or heard or felt causal in this mass attack as if an army of ten trillion ghost soldiers armed with death had come ashore and were filling in the spaces everywhere.
over the sea
in the opposite direction
of its pull, now and then,
the bay’s surface stretches
and pushes toward me
the smallest lip of water,
up over the stones,
whispering, “Hush.”
Author Bio:
Charles Tarlton is a retired teacher now writing poems full time. He lives in old Saybrook, Connecticut with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter.
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