Sometimes we pretended to know nothing

 and it was easy. To sing a requiem of luxury

 found by a fireplace, a Moroccan rug, a Norwegian Forest cat.
 

We could afford to stand six feet away.

We knew the rapture of the microwave,

the infusion of grapefruits with gin.

If this life were drawn in charcoal,

the brushstrokes would connect like strangler figs,

unusual and bold. Not a fiasco exactly. Something worse.

No falling chandeliers and circus ropes

but there was a rumbling heard each night at eight,

the crashing of copper-bottomed pots 

and pans across the avenues. This is what we did

to show communion. A homegrown trundling

towards new humanness, the blue mason jars

lined up in extra clean cabinets holding nothing

except the gift of nothing, the clear, runway

fandom of being, a fusion without expectation 

or outcome, only the pulse of the air, the promise

of another way to hold nothing, to become nothing,
 
to satisfy ourselves with pure nothing.

We’re running a Coronavirus poem once a week, after a call for submissions. You can read more information, and a listing of the poems, here.