Poem During the Plague: Poem 37

Tim Suermondt

 Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest JOSEPHINE BAKER SWIMMING POOL  from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

EASTER, 2020

No poet can write a better Easter poem

Than the one by Yeats—Connolly and Pearse

Have nothing to worry about. And with

The pressure off I can write simply of the return

Of the sun, and while waiting for a sort of daily

Resurrection of things recall how in my thirties

I walked from Queens to Manhattan and back

Just because I could. Outside the empty churches

Saints must be lingering, having already made

The condition into a form of art for centuries.

“How is your poem coming?” my wife, who’s

Boiling eggs in the kitchen, says. “I’ll ask a saint,”

Leaving her and them as confused by the answer

As I am, adding a dab more of the sun before I finish.