from "Life On Mars: A Renga in Time of Corona" — Gary Duehr

The house still asleep.
 On a pillow, her black hair

Tangled as seaweed.

How will you know when others

Rise to shadow the sidewalk?

*

Last flakes, slight shadows,

Streak past the kitchen window

To wipe out the sky.

March has swept the streets, but for

This face mask: smudged, torn blossom.

*

On a U.S. map,
 The pale pink smudges swell up.

The fever aches, spikes.

You forget to sleep. Sleep stalls.

How to witness from afar?

*

What's there to witness:
 The sun's last rays burn a hole

In the ocean's swell.

Along the harbor, joggers—
 Spaced out as beads—lug their Labs.

Space-time swells, balloons.

Sun-bleached streets, their emptiness,

Sting the eyes: no one.

As a 19th-century
 Tintype reveals transient ghosts.

*

We are ghosts, transients,

Overwhelmed by memory.

We are refugees.

In his drive, a guy unloads

12-packs from his Range Rover.

*

How can we unload
 These remnants? Along the Charles,

The headlights' bright beads,

The orange flares of skyscrapers

Doubling in the dark current.

*

Our days have doubled:

Before/After, Then and Now.

Out on Plum Island,

A string of hikers heads out

Into the bright emptiness.

Here's the Great Empty:

Terminals, hotel lobbies,

Train stations, plazas.

Under ashen skies, this rain.
 Down Boylston, a fierce wind whips.

*

A lifetime ago,
 Scraps of paper, police tape—

Boylston's utter hush.

The whole city holds its breath.

Forsythias spark, explode.

[reprinted with permission from https://www.garyduehr.com/poetry]