In a State of Emergency
In a State of Emergency
After reading Cameron Awkward-Rich's Meditations in an Emergency
By Fran Westwood
i.
I wake
and the strange dream does not evaporate.
Highways empty. Store shelves clear.
The wind on the beach.
The photo of doctors from Wuhan moving now
with their bags to Italy. Silent office towers, a cloud
of pigeons, dust.
Silas watches weeks of theatre income disappear
and the lights at Bare Market dim before its official opening—
More to be announced.
West Park home bars visitors. In a plaid blanket
in a corner chair my grandma sits alone.
Down the street Mezes flips its sign to Closed.
Through the window under wine glasses hanging unused
the owner clings to his wife.
Within days nations learn a new lexicon. The language of
disease—a word reorganizing worlds.
Occasionally I can hear the solitude of water speak, but mostly
I search for small boats between our islands—
on the subway heading east two curly heads brush too close
under old summer festival advertisements,
on the street corner a little girl in a knit sweater and
blue wool bobble hat stops to stroke a stranger’s cat,
on the kitchen table a scrawled note I’ll let you know
how today plays out—
ii.
This week,
is it any different from so many others?
I prepare jalapeno pinto beans, cilantro-lime rice, slice avocado.
It’s the right time of year to notice tulip buds breaking surfaces
of mud born from frozen soil and sun, to hold coffee, wander
the bowing boardwalk slats. On the beach a girl plays catch
with her dog. By the sand someone set up towering wind chimes.
They tremor a song.
This week, between us is the difference. As yet unaffected bodies
keep our distance. Us, a reincarnated word. Love keeps us apart.
Untouched but unsettled. Still arriving
in the odd silence. This week, meals prepared, eaten alone. I walk, notice
the tiny vessels of green. The stranger throwing her ball. The empty cafe.
A husk of a lullaby. Your face, your voice on the other end of a line,
wherever you are kept. You said Can I call you?
You, speaking
to somewhere text alone can’t reach,
but these scrappy words, they do try.
Fran Westwood
Poet & Counsellor
Photography by Luis González