Sirens fill the empty canyons, heralds of a deadly spring,
while the images repeat and repeat and repeat across the screen.
Masked faces telling desperate stories of flooded hallways
and gasping hours, of fear, exhaustion, and despair,
of knocks on nursing home windows, of face-time deaths,
and worse, the prospect of triage roulette.

But outside, many fall silently, alone, as they lived,
remembered only by a neighbor’s tardy knock,
or atop the sidewalk grate, as they lived, and have now passed,
quietly, still forgotten, untallied in the daily count, to fill the trenches
of potter’s field that beckon the unclaimed, to be bagged and sheathed
and to soldier in neat rows, uncounted once last time.

The deadbolt turns and we move silently
along the perimeter,
cats marking our territory,
while panes sparkle,
portals into the nothingness below.
We sit and wait.
And wonder.

I still search for you,
or someone like you.
I am sad we no longer speak,
to love and talk the way we used to,
our thoughts unprotected,
like animals in the rain.

I’ll never be happy he told her.
She said it wasn’t true,
that he was young,
that he didn’t know any better,
that things will change someday.
And when they met many years later,
when they were silver-haired and slower afoot,
she said she was sorry,
that she was the one who didn’t understand,
and that he was right all along.
And hearing that, he turned slowly and walked away.

Brown and brittle and shrunken,
and having slipped through the tines,
or escaped the blower’s roar,
they tumble across the hard earth
carried by the December wind
to settle beneath the boxwoods
and then lay quiet under winter’s blanket
with the hope to see another spring.

The eulogies resound in stentorian tones for the great,
those of prominence, those who have ascended to the pinnacle,
those who have known power, and who have changed worlds,
whose names fall from the lips of every man, who are offered
unencumbered embrace, a deferential half pace backward.
But what of the good man, without position, sans societal perch,
whose wealth is paltry, accomplishment meager,
yet whose effort is no less herculean, no less courageous,
whose heart is no less pure, the good man doomed to failure
through paucity of talent, or missed opportunity,
or plain bad fortune, yet who resolves to continue, plod foot after foot to anonymous end, and whose name will not be voiced in so much as a whisper for all eternity.

old man I see you
blue suit and bow tie
and hat placed neatly aside
cradling your coffee
an absentminded gaze
through the tall windows
and beyond
to the young passersby
in a hurry
as you once were
busily home to love
to soothe the withering day
love that you once had
but has passed
old man I see you
your eyes a fluid blue
still
wistful
locked in memory
bittersweet
vivid
that plays before you
to touch
taste
breathe
a pas de deux of passion
eclipsed by time
old man I see you
and you are not alone