Two Poems

The Altered Eye

             For the eye altering alters all…

             William Blake

Last year my friend, Steve, was sick.

The hounds of his heart ran wild

in his chest and ate their fill until

his doctors finally collared them

too late to undo their ravage.

He was housebound for a year,

had to stay home away from

dandelion and sunflower,

rose and churchyard—all

manner of floating infectors.

Now the world is sick and Steve

stays at home like the rest of us,

quarantined against invisible intruders but,

unlike last year, ringed by wife and kids.

“It’s the least isolated I’ve been in a year,”

he writes, and alters the landscape,

the inscape—alters all.

Prayer in the Time of Coronavirus

Praying to God about COVID-19

is like asking a fox

to lay an egg

after he’s eaten

all the chickens.