Alfred Nicol
Stay at Home Advisory
Pity those who live apart,
unvisited, untouched, unknown,
who’ve kept their distance from the start,
and much prefer to be alone.
Pity the unhealthy too,
who watch the night, who sit and brood,
who really ought to pity you,
far less adept at solitude.
Pity those in attic rooms
who seldom pull the curtains back
to peer out where the sickness looms
in search of some bright thing they lack.
Yet those you pity may well ask,
estranged, Was it not ever thus?
Who goes outside without a mask?
So what is quarantine to us?
—Submitted on 09/26/2020
Alfred Nicol is the author of Brief Accident of Light: Poems of Newburyport (Kelsay Books, 2019), a collaboration with poet Rhina P. Espaillat; Animal Psalms (Able Muse Press, 2016); Elegy for Everyone (Prospero’s World Press, 2010), and Winter Light (University of Evansville Press, 2004), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Nicol’s work has appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, Dark Horse, Commonweal, The Hopkins Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Contemporary Poetry of New England (Middlebury, 2002), Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century (Dartmouth, 2014), and Best American Poetry 2018 (Scribner, 2018), among others.
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