Milestones

RICHARD DIXON

May 5, 2020

 Yet one more morning

open the day to more bad news

unwelcome milestones

and always more deaths

one short month into this quarantine

already feels like half a year

gloved and masked against foreign agents

In the park yellow crime tape

around playground equipment

slipped down now to its ankles

across the street, Love’s travel stores

corporate expansion

hosts a small army of construction workers

no masks or gloves, hard hats

and reflector vests in their place

We’re going to get out of this thing

climb on out of the mud

like something primordial

clean up, shake it off

like so much sloughed skin

spring, so far, holds forth

only weak promises

RICHARD DIXON is a poet and essayist living in Oklahoma City. He is a retired high school Special Education teacher and tennis coach. His work has appeared in Red Earth Review, Red River Review, Dragon Poet Review and many others, including the Woody Guthrie anthologies and the new Oklahoma poets anthology. He has been a featured reader at Full Circle Bookstore, Norman Depot, Shawnee and the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival.