In Praise of Home School
I see my neighbor through the aspen tree.
Usually in suit & heels at a desk downtown
now she’s home in baggy sweats, intent
on deconstructing a pile of delivery boxes
creating a cardboard idol to order.
On a walk, a grey brush rabbit
sits half-in, half-out of a hedge.
His nose pulsates; mine feels
red & hot under a makeshift mask.
I give him social distance, as he
waits for what might happen next.
MORE: See all of our Write On, Colorado entries and learn how to submit your own here.
This stretch of isolation conjures
images from childhood, when time
was a pleasure to kill – swaying
in a hammock of faded quilts, absorbed
in the lackadaisical dance of clouds
casements of mind open wide.
Some say shelter-at-home is a wasteland
of boredom bathed in cathode rays
of ruminating on things long hid –
slackened bonds of coupledom
slender reeds of habit
how family depletes us.
I say – we are being home schooled.
The world has been too fast
too loud too much for too long.
We are blinking, peering at the
frightened eyes of the front-line
the carnage of the microscopic
the myth of endless progress.
Praise the lesson: earth is not ours
we are not master of anything.
Anna Dunlap is a poet, community volunteer, and executive coach living in Denver.