Last Day of March

On the eleventh, I was sent home from work.
Now it’s been ten days of distance,
Zoom conferences, no rubbing shoulders
with colleagues and friends.

Our crisis is hardly the first: the diarist
John Evelyn observed his own plague.
Coffins clogged the London streets,
shops were shuttered, people huddled indoors

as they prayed and sickened. Our lock-down
maylast for months, perhaps longer,
bringing with it a palpable lack of touch.
Phone voices almost seem like caresses,

ramped up by the need to connect.
Tamping down dread, huddled
in our dark bed, I seek your hand
as you seek mine, a life raft.

Margaret A. Robinson
Swarthmore