Corona Children

I keep searching
Not for numbers or trends
Not for predictions or forecasts
Not even for reasons or truths
I keep searching
Because it is all I know to do.

The virus is microscopic;
Aerosols and droplets floating unseen
Batting around in spring lit air
People turning heads away, with steps for
Distance from what cannot be seen.

I keep searching
Not for numbers or trends
Not for predictions or forecasts
Not even for reasons or truths
I keep searching
Because it is all I know to do.

The morning alarm comes the same
Gentle caress and rise from bed
The kids are late, to come down the stairs
Fruit and cereal and milk that we caution.
Then we return, to rooms for a day
Those we’ve bedazzled as if we would stay.

I keep searching
Not for numbers or trends
Not for predictions or forecasts
Not even for reasons or truths
I keep searching
Because it is all I know to do.

Rummaging around screens lit so hard
From headline to basin,
Troughs and crests through ribbons of mind
Scissors and slides with fingers so push
The lines we had seen the time just before
Molecules de-scrambled  to tell us the same
With lights from the window tinting the scene.

I keep searching
Not for numbers or trends
Not for predictions or forecasts
Not even for reasons or truths
I keep searching
Because it is all I know to do.

Nurses and workers pushing gurneys astray
Yellowed mortuary walls, widowing of gas
Fragrant hand wringing beneath suds and hot sand
My fingers, odorant tips, enemies when glancing a cheek, an eye, my mouth.
Agape, watching governors and officials stating the obvious every day
As bilious alcohol fumes scorch my plain palms.

I keep searching
Not for numbers or trends
Not for predictions or forecasts
Not even for reasons or truths
I keep searching
Because it is all I know to do.

My children, erratic, jumping into a fray that exists between walls they cannot escape
The time, a day, a week, a month, a year, bleeding together as they sing lost songs
Harrowed and harried they stare at the walls
Squares of faces that gnarl toward each lesson
Tainted throughout by nothing academic
Avoiding comment, teasing no more, a reality for them that will last forever
Charting their course with planned for gaps when everything will stop as the walls return
My children, unmoored, dropped into the soil, rebirthed into something of their world not mine
They finish their lessons; they finish their dinner; they finish and go up the stairs as if we would stay.

I keep searching
Not for numbers or trends
Not for predictions or forecasts
Not even for reasons or truths
I keep searching
Because it is all I know to do.

Dorian LaGuardia