Diane Kendig
Report From the Watch
Mornings my friend posts a photo of his sunrise
from a gated community in South Carolina
while in Cleveland we crawl through autumn
agog with flowers, gourds and hazel nuts, but know
Covid’s gonna be different for us come winter.
It’s not over by a long shot—a long shot no longer
a cliché exactly, though I don’t own a gun.
John’s photos are idyllic, light brightening wildly
or mistily vague but warmer than here
where it’s colder each day. Our trees finally
shot up yellow, and my neighbor’s burning bush
went to town in a red as original as sin.
Me, I’m moving in for the long haul, which seems heavier
this week, carrying the last of this and that. “Six more months,”
says my friend in Atlanta. What do Southerners know.
I wave from inside my window, rimed for the first time
this year, breathe on the glass, rub open a circle
that steams over, write with my finger, OK 4 NOW.
—Submitted on 11/09/2020
Diane Kendig‘s latest book is Prison Terms (Main Street Rag, 2017). With Robert E. McDonough, she co-edited the tribute anthology In the Company of Russell Atkins (Red Giant Books, 2016). Kendig’s poems have appeared in J Journal, Wordgathering, Valparaiso Review, and other journals. Curator of the Cuyahoga County Public Library weblog, Read + Write, she is on the web at dianekendig.com.
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