Postcard from a Pandemic (Glosa)
Photo: Janet Kvammen “Baby It’s Covid Outside”
Janet Kvammen
Pinch forward through snow
across empty-headed sidewalks.
We are alone
A Crow flies backward into yesterday.
"Postcard from Rainbow Playland" — Alan Hill
Into our story we piece together puzzles
with stillness the seasons arrive
polished to a high gloss
by the fragile hands of Eos. Unforgiven in purpose
the river always self-isolating,
lonely as a crow —
forging us into witness. Here a silent grove,
where nesting cottonwood haunt the forest—
a ghost dance rising to golden halo,
pinch forward through snow.
Crystal mountains shine clear as day
azure summers the sky.
Hope bands us together like a ring an anniversary
sheltered in place. Truth rises,
clings to clouds with silver linings,
the storm brews a murder of conspiracy flocks
in from the south. Weathering it out
neighbours bang pot lids kindness blooms here
windows full of hearts rainbows coloured with chalks
across empty-headed sidewalks.
What came before all this?
Tell me about your fears.
There within we live. We are the same.
An abundance of urgency overcomes us to make a change to connect.
What of time? Beneath this majestic cathedral
of trees we live in the moment come undone
broken and silent.
Healing light skyward reaching,
the need to touch a brave new world.
Here in these wild-woods where dreams are on their own
we are alone
I painted an ocean inside you
one precious stroke at a time,
the stars and the heavens, too.
Each beat of our hearts an incoming tide
pulling us forward. We brace ourselves for a second wave
illuminated by the distant Milky Way.
An electric wholeness pulses around us alive and breathing
only the edge of night between us.
Together we stand at a doorway,
a crow flies backward into yesterday.
JANET KVAMMEN is a poet, photographer, and visual artist. Busy on the literary and arts scene of the New Westminster uniVerse, she is Vice-President of the Royal City Literary Arts Society and New West Artists. Click here for full bio ->