Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
-4/3 9:45 pm 50º Showers
Gerald wagoner
Tonight I am with clouds
in the night sky. There
is wind. Halyards knock
the mast. Flags fly west.
I cannot stanch the
dimming city light.
This place, if possible,
feels emptier again.
-4/6 9:15 pm 48º Clear
Each car is audible.
To youth I am invisible.
Two middle aged
women drink vodka
on their stoop. Their
greeting, in passing,
sounds too much
like farewell. Venus
gleams tonight.
The moon is Islamic.
It is setting.
-4/11 8:12 am 40º Sunny
Tomorrow He is risen.
Two meters sounds
closer than six feet
here on this long line.
It’s seniors-only-time
at the grocery store.
life’s simple isness
makes living
incomprehensible.
We wait long on line
A man with a bullhorn
begs for our patience.
He is young.
I have less time than
he dreams. Each
year, for years
I tremble this week
in rapt anticipation
for the resurrection
of my beloved
Dove’s chocolate
covered, coconut
cream eggs.
-4/13 9:25 pm 47º Clear
Across the Gowanus
the murky echoes of a
past fading. On the Union
Street bridge I adjust
my focus to freeze the
mylar shimmer of big
city light on ruffled water.
-4/15 2 pm 47º Sun and Clouds
A ladder truck flipping
red and white strobe,
glare, claxons, sirens,
charges full flat out
down empty Smith Street,
up toward Atlantic Avenue.
The uniformed responder’s
white, red, or blue lights
fracture our silent nights
into shards of alarm.
Someone, somewhere
is burning, is gasping.
-4/16 2 pm 44º Windy, Clouds
Queued up Trader Joe’s.
Funk organ sound track.
A woman wearing black
velour hoodie, legs criss-
crossed, hair drawn back,
a round knot tight on top.
Cubist: all arcs & vectors.
-4/26 2:20 pm 48º Sun and Clouds
I meet my doctor
on the street. On
The Island some
must hose off cold
naked outside:
deaths, staff sick.
Everyone making
nothing the same
like when you snap
a carpet, disturb
particulate tension.
In the river a wave
through water,
being matter,
is still a wave to
a rug, but not
to the same rug.
Recently, though
some have begun
to spread rumors
of chimerical
plateau indicators.
May 1, 2020
We cannot hold our hands
We must hide our mouths
Must abide our times
Maybe we follow our gut
Maybe pass some revelers
Play with empty words
Want to believe
the lost can return
We hear sirens clear
See blue and red and
white speed into black
sounds that carry
The old floats away
A lost balloon
A message in a bottle
to be finished
on sidewalk in chalk
We all dance the wide
berth shuffle now
with grace
with fluid ease
Still I walk at night
to hillside park
to inky harbor
the surface roiled
the skyline steady
Park Slope, Brooklyn 10:25 pm clear 63º
On this mild June night
some young people
have stacked themselves
respectfully
up a stoop to murmur,
share wine, greet
dog-walking neighbors
The timbre of their laughter
uneasy, tinged.
Down the hill beside
the corner deli others
cluster to mumble,
to abuse. Alone, beyond
light a woman rails against
repeated betrayals.
On 4th Avenue a motorcycle
is being gunned for green.
A fevered rider dreams
of gears ever revving,
hell-bent to achieve
that critical velocity,
and escape this constant
goddamned gravity.
A Sign
You loop from your house to your house
on an unseasonably warm February day.
There are church bells
and a fuzzy golden labradoodle.
The Cobble Hill Park roundabout
is surrounded with green benches loaded
with locals in light jackets. No parkas.
Everyone looks reflective under the sun.
“Mommy, Mommy! the human brain can
store 100 times more than a computer.”
Remember that pang in the sternum
returning to a beach from your childhood.
What breezes mean to clouds.
Why a picture grows like moss,
or under which import it is filed.
Wait! That line of mothers and children
in front of the mobile Covid Testing truck are all
buying ice cream from mobile Mister Frosty.
Good sign, you hope.
Gerald Wagoner’s childhood was divided between Eastern Oregon and Northern Montana, where he was raised under the doctrine of benign neglect. With a BA in Creative Writing, Gerald pursued the art of sculpture, and moved to Brooklyn, NY in 1982. He taught Art and English for the NYC Department of Education for 30 years. As retirement neared he decided to devote himself to the art of poetry in order to express the poignancy in life’s arc, and explore how that journey gives us meaning.
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