James K. Zimmerman Corona (November 2020 Redux) snug in jackets, burrowing hands in gloves, we pass a curved stone wall, finialcapped, two lions at a gate eroded manes and teeth perhaps the entrance to an English garden, you say but there are no lanes laden with lavender or rows of irises no patchwork quilt of roses rising from beds of moss poison ivy tendrils snake their way up the lions’ haunches barren sinews of wisteria drape the wall, veins on the back of an old man’s hands or the path to a portico, you say we imagine a mansion reigned here before condos invaded across the shaded lane it’s so quiet, you say no children play among maples no dogs plead for a walk no one sings from a window only droplets of a vireo’s song, the arid wheeze of a red-tail hawk, liquid arpeggios of a robin
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