Covid in the Park

Ribbons flutter on the path up ahead. Another doomed tree?

Or a wishing-tree, a fairy-tree, a rag-tree?

Repository of our prayers, our requests for intervention,

for blessing in these new Covid days?

Pink and striped, the ribbons look like crystal sugar sticks

Their hydraulic action excavating and demolishing milk teeth

Souvenir rock wrapped in plastic that creaks and cracks and cuts like glass

I smell salt on the air, hear the flow and backflow of waves shingling across stone

But these are Exercise Stations, not trees,

Their candy-striped-pink supplications

Asking you not to embrace

Warning you not to engage

Reminding you that taste and touch

Can be fatal these days.

Copyright 2020 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved