It Was In The Water
By Douglas Strong
Quarantine rose with the rows,
piled in ditches and the backs of trucks,
asleep behind hospitals and pews.
Her hand was a pebble in mine as we chose our way,
under barricaded bridges and scarred streets
--weren’t home when we first heard the news--
anchors report the new flu, and
the report of gunsmoke into crowds whose
only crime was not want but need.
For shots ran dry as the vaccines pumped
clean; not clean like an operating room but clean
as a life reamed from the corpse.
Smoke like souls wound veils while wind
picked muddy paper and leafy plastic bags up
in spirals like eddies of a river
from the street. I pushed her behind me
so that she wouldn’t see the skinny pale vagrant prostrate,
arms stretched stiff crucifixion wide,
pointed towards us from the sidewalk.
