What Rough Beast | Covid-19 Edition | 06 12 20 | Stephen Huiting

Stephen Huiting
Distancer

He totes a slim flask
Of alcohol, slips
It in
And out of a hidden
Pocket
In his coat.

His mask
Makes mystery of mood
Or of mouth
At all.
Tarnished by his silver
Breaths; when
Retracted to a shadowed
Groove, a corner
In the room,
Distance
And gloom swear to secrets
Whether breath moves
The faceless
Fabric, which an eerie
Faith,and his eyes,
Say it must.

He is a lone man,
A splitter, fractured
From the main flow.
No
One has seen
Him come close;
Whenever another
Seems to approach—
To finally,
Peeringly
Quench question to known—
He is gone,
Inhaled by a
Wall, by his own
Masked aura,
Own sorrow.

He is hardened,
Yet he has never killed a man.
His hands
Share their spiral
Souls
But with gloves.

Who is
This stranger?
Why is he feared?
Others fight
To be less alone.

He is a survivor,
A wizened
Distance strider, with careful
Life thudding through
Sterile veins.

—Submitted on 06/12/2020

Stephen Huiting‘s poems have appeared in The Union, a newspaper serving Grass Valley and Nevada County, Calif.

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