Inoculation
The crescent, like a macroscopic sign
of some malignant microscopic cell,
dissolves in morning blood of red and purple.
The antidotal sun of spring will light
the fallen on their way, and soon revive
the world in yellow, white, and blue. Look there!
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On streets and sidewalks, all the multicolored
chalk-drawn hopscotch boxes, marble circles,
words and numbers, arrows, smiling faces.
See the gardens filled with crocus,
hyacinth, and rose stems trimmed to bloom,
and in the fields long chains of dandelions.
In breezes fly the maple keys and hawks
that kree and larks above the waking earth—
Perhaps we’ll learn, and in post-quarantine
revere the phases of a moon that signals
fleeting time, and in its fullness know
the power any given moment holds,
and find our aging bodies freshened, light
beneath the new-crowned sun, like summer children
dashing free, reveling in the deep, green days.
Brian Palmer is a poet living in Fruita, Colorado. He also edits the literary journal, THINK, which can be viewed at thinkjournal.org.