Coronavirus Dream

LEE ROBINSON

May 31, 2020

I hug the guy who delivers the mail,

The old cashier at the grocery store

Whose mask doesn’t hide her smile,

Whose patience purifies the air.

I hug the barber who’s cut my hair

Two hundred times, who’s hanging a sign—

CLOSED—and ask him to share one more

Bad joke before next time, if there is one.

In this dream of course I can fly.

I am out-of-body with my antibody.

I cross oceans, hug my children, my

Grandchildren.  “I love you,” I say,

Not “Goodbye.”

LEE ROBINSON’S first poetry collection, HEARSAY, won Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University Press and the Violet Crown Award from the Texas Writers' League.  Her second collection, CREED, was published by Plainview Press.  LEARNING TO LOVE MY ARMADILLO, her third collection, is forthcoming from Groundhog Poetry Press.  She lives near Comfort, Texas.