Peter Galen Massey

a green willow sways / buttercups bloom on the bank / as the virus spreads

days and days and days / i clasp my hands together / all i feel is bone

full streets are empty / and ballfields have grown again / into wilderness

they are alone now / their bodies in a dim hall / waiting for nothing

this yearning for you / fills my sails, longer than years / wider than the sea

I wrote these poems during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic and I think they remain today an accurate portrait of my experience. The first haiku is from March 2020, when the Covid lockdown began just as spring was arriving in my hometown. Loneliness and isolation dominate these poems, and they are shared by the living and the dead. Four years later, I think this poem composed from five haiku stands up and remains a true picture of the time.