Wednesday 25 March 2020

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

 

1 comment:

  1. So evocative. I remember the early days when kids were playing on the exercise machines, and then the next time, the ribbon was all around them!

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