I wait to Tie My Lace: A Poem about the Pandemic

I wait.
To tie my lace
Drive to a mart, fill a real cart
Loaded with eggs
And my girl’s laughing legs.
I wait to go out
Eat, drink and fight again
In the backseat of a friend’s car
In the dim senselessness of a bar.

I am done
With sick numbers
Dancing on charts
The guilty comfort
Of living with death
Grocery at the door
Amazons on the floor
Days moving past
Hidden in shadows
And the stare of pixels
On my unblinking face.

I wait.
To lift my daughter
And toss her to school
Take my caged son
To a bend in the river
And return him to
The unwitnessed spreads
Of the trees’ hands
Unbreathed airs
The smell of untrampled earth
Wrapped in fallen flowers.

I wait
To curse the biker on the road
Stare endlessly from a plane's hole
See the washed earth
Mushy and green
And put on my musty trousers
To an office meeting.
I wait for a day
To walk on my bones
Far from screens
Away from phones
A day without a roof on my head
To run to uncovered sky
Where the sun has bled
To the smell of unmasked air
And the song of wind
Knitting my hair.