Corona

JANET MCCANN

March 16, 2020

Corona, I would have thought beautiful:

sphere exuding misty light,

tinier glittery pinpoints 

farthest from the center.  Not this world map,

its enlarging black circles.

Not death counts, not statistics.

Not like a disaster you hear about.

The great wave, horror of the loss.

The downed plane, the industrial

accident, the hurricane,

any particular incident of history.

You mourn, send money, give thanks

that it's not here.  But this thing:

No end to it.  A toxic wave rolling

over the globe.  Black circles

beginning to coalesce, meet.

People you yearn to touch.

The feel of skin on skin fading.

Not fire or ice.  Not the Bible.

Wars and rumors of wars. More like

my persistent nightmare as a child: 

square black slates covering the sky,

one after another, less and less

sunlight coming through.  Finally

a single square left, a beam of light

on a distant field.  I'd wake up then,

just before the last slate blocked the sky.

Journals publishing JANET MCCANN’S work include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou’wester, America, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, and others. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she taught at Texas A & M University from 1969-2016, is now Professor Emerita. She has co-edited anthologies with David Craig, Odd Angles of Heaven (Shaw, 1994), Place of Passage (Story Line, 2000), and Poems of Francis and Clare (St. Anthony Messenger, 2004). Most recent poetry collection: The Crone at the Casino (Lamar University Press,  2014).