Poem During the Plague: Poem 8

Gregg Weatherby is an actor and poet.  He has also been a bartender, ranch foreman, deckhand, and managing editor of SPIN Magazine.  He has written three chapbooks, Under Orion, Bone Island, and Approaching Home.  He is currently looking for a home for a full-length book of poems. He teaches writing and poetry at SUNY Cortland.

In Loco

There are worse places

to be inside any of my old apartments

in the city the only views smudged

sooty windows pigeon-filled

airshafts and garbage-strewn

back alleys heavy metal gates for shutters

no sun ever

here there is light and glass due east

due west views of shagbark  round red maple

willow rising sun

and setting sun and birds

oh the birds I know some of them

by name now one female cardinal

at the feeder three times a day her mate

quiet in the tree mourning doves

three species of elegant woodpeckers

all in their black-and-whites

on the news the curve resists flattening

who would have thought in the city

reefer trucks are used for bodies

in the Spring rain in the burning bush

little wrens shelter in place