Tom Zimmerman Stay at Home

Stay at Home

“I believe in you my soul,” old Whitman wrote. Your soul’s been quarantined for decades, flitting madly in the attic, drunk on sump-pump swill. You wrote a poem Tuesday with the simile “the soul expands as if put on a ventilator.” Sure. Spring cleaning’s what you need, but winter’s caught you napping: melting snow on tender tips of spruces, bluejay squawking, feeder fallen off the shepherd’s crook. The coffee’s gone, too soon for beer or scotch. In bed, you read a Polish poet whose name you can’t pronounce. Wife’s made you fabric masks—one black, one blue— to wear in public. “Bruised,” she says. “So you.”