Knobby trees reach for the clueless skies.

Like the Macbethian forest,
it is all moving at us–

Zoom funerals,
Forbidden weddings,
Mailing surgical masks made in China
to NewYork from San Francisco–
Except they are sold out.

The whole world’s stage is a balcony:
In Italy, they sing opera,
In Spain and London, they clap for the nurses,
In San Francisco, they howl like wolves.
In Moscow, priests in black spray streets with holy water from their Jeeps.
In Turkmenistan, the word coronavirus is banned,
In Thailand, monkeys fight for food by a temple.
A masked line to Trader Joe’s in Tuscon
is now a choir of angels.

6 feet apart,
6 feet under.

Proverbial–now–dolphins
bounce in Venetian canals.

Quarantine is a word

born in Venice.
Quarantena.
It sounds like Tarantella.
A macabre dance of the Black Death plague.

I see a Venetian canal,
overrun by the murky emerald,
and a piano is sinking yet floating
I have to play it–
the tune I forgot–
and dance

in the warm amniotic waters
like those damn dolphins.
Next to me, the whole orchestra is going down
like a Titanic
in their tuxedos.

Hit your heels
on the cracks

in the hard skin of the Earth,
Silicon Age,
Break the asphalt like an eggshell
To the drummed cacophony–
Qua-ran-te-na,–
Sprout,

In yellow and red,
Invisible digital ink,
An unwritten anti-Utopia
that no one will ever read–

Quarantena.