The plague spring

1.
Spring blooms with empty streets.
Chain-links sprout and spread overnight

and flower with heavy locks on
the fences around basketball courts.

A few people drift by the closed library
like pollen, moved by invisible laws.

The sun buckles and stalls.
It’s the spring of closed doors.

2.
We wait for something unexpected
that would signal the expected’s return.

Down the street a car sneezes and drives
off like it’s allergic to us.The pileated

woodpecker swoops in long arcs
from leafless tree to leafless tree

like he is sewing up a wound. When
his red crest twitches as he tightens

the thread, will there be pain?

3.
There’s a sound everywhere this sunny day,

a faucet in the world being turned off. We huddle
in the quiet, afraid of being alone.

The quiet of the afraid is worse than the quiet
of the dead, who are not around to hear it.