Pandemic, 2020

by Pat Hanahoe-Dosch

She woke in rain, the grief of an entire city,
 
water and wind in the darkness. 
 
She burned, but rain could not extinguish her,
 
Rain was soft on her bones at first
Stars and moonlight were frost
Air singed her throat
The voices of patients in the rooms,
hail on a tin roof.

Her bones creaked,
a chestnut tree covered 
in blight 
bending under the weight of gale force wind.  
 
This was life after death, 
after burying one person too many. 
She was a felled log covered in termites, 
swarmed by torrential rain.

She was 
lightening
with nowhere to strike,
chasing voices of the dead,
thunder in a crevasse of scratched and chipped night
a black crepe draped moon.

Sent to us: December 26, 2020