pandemic: even the nice days, we’re inside

    The forest drifts in through the window, rising up the slope

        from narrow water carving low points lower.

Once with you, a wading bird we watched,

      waiting to see how close it would

come. Now that trail is gated by the threat of breath, too many

        people too close, path sated and spilling over.

         I am hungry for the touch of ferns,

for happenstance and a lost world of

coincidence I once felt standing all around me,

like a stand of trees in the city