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Shadow every time there is light.
I would very much like to go unseen across the lens,
to prep, equip ICUs.
But I don’t think we’re doing so well.
All the craters are troubled.
The planet is leaving the car park.
We’ve retired from each other’s houses.
The sun people are still scared,
and hanging baskets and markets are a terror,
while some buy the myths
on social media shores.
They can trace our movements, follow our fears, a dark wall.
And some have started this finger-pointing:
if you show sleight of hand, you’ll be exiled.
One thing that crosses the mind of a kid
propped up against Lets
is to say anything, oops, sorry Society.
If you’re not wearing a mask, what’s the intent?
I was adhering to the zone, at home,
chasing the hours of vanishing like a cat
or a ventilator
singing a melody chainlink.
You can get food online,
but people want to hang out with each other, like any animal,
halfway between good intentions and this.
Every flavour brings luck.
You can do face screens. Work-wise, everyone is in
their quarters and hasn’t gone out the window.
Figures are rising, guidelines, deliveries.
The aeroplane is circling again,
like space rations, incremental.
A great disturbance from lofty heights.
Out of our own blithe ignorance, we meet
far from all galvanised barbs,
our eyes walking for miles, the welcomes,
sun in October beating itself senseless
against every wall. And normal
is unwittingly mad.
Our quarantine flicks across fences.
The sky is blue as a home
where a father has a mind
to show the kids
how an early morning migraine starts.
The ocean nibbles at our bending down,
a couple weathering a walk, singing the pandemic
into the moon, close-up of a fog in a pub.
Table for Two ended again yesterday.
An ambulance light in the street,
bright with excessive control.
Now a close-up of the planet.
All this watching.
I make out a piece
of blue sky, test for clarity.
Afric McGlinchey
