March (The Fog Line) (Q1 2020)

March (The Fog Line) collects 101 poems written in March 2020 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, many of them drafted as the first COVID restrictions began taking effect at the start of the pandemic.

Almost Spring

It’s almost spring: A sudden green
replaced the hills of blackened snow,
as overnight the sun-built strength
of dawn arrived to grow and burn.

The cold dissolved into a breeze
warm enough to keep the windows
open morning-wide, the glass panes raised
for early bird-song screens. We know:

Winter is a patient close to death,
waiting for that final shallow breath
when the dying finally stops, and tears
drop dead eyes clear to cloudless skies.

Minefield

The driveway is a minefield
of worms to the mailbox,
and I’m skipping like a kid
playing hopscotch on recess,
dodging the lines in the rain.
It was supposed to be sixty
degrees and then storm, but
I think we went straight for
the storm, skipped the sixty.
It’s still almost cold and so
wet, everything pooling or
dripping with water. I open
the box and it’s empty,
my hand damp and cold from
the door. I wipe it on my
jeans and retreat, tiptoeing
back past the worms to the
safety and quarantined
trenches of home.

March Madness

A cloud descends over the month
and stays, the days all grays and whites
without a silver lining.

Indifference rising, it hangs like a fog
over half-frozen fields,
slicks skin, mucks minds.

Time fades; this March is madness.

Apathetic sadness floods like melting snow
while panicked masses rock in place,
together keeping pace alone.

Mistakes were made
and it’s too late to fix them.

Faith fades like frost soaking the worsted,
worn by the wise against false spring.

Anyone

I can’t see you when
I close my eyes
anymore. You’re like
a ghost
repeating a routine,
looping my room
in steps you never
really took.
I can’t hear you,
your lost echo
of a voice. When
I close my eyes,
your face is just
a glimpse of teeth
smiling, but
I can’t remember
what that looks like
either.