From a Distance
by Amelie Robitaille
We are all just a little bit crazy right now
waving our palms for Passover
via Zoom, holding our children at the end
of our phones, kissing babies through window
glass, wishing our aging parents a happy
birthday with cake and candles on the front porch.
Meanwhile, astronomers discover the scarlet fan
that spread across skies over Japan 1400 years ago
like an omen, a pheasant’s tail, formed from charged
particles spit out by the sun. We are all a little stirred up
forgetting to look up from the morass, too busy
pinning pleats, attaching elastic to fabric masks,
washing our hands until skin chaps, though
White House officials are still debating
and waiting to see how the pandemic will pan
out, empty panoramas making for less cluttered
photo ops, though who wants a family album
with no people in it? Meanwhile NASA
astronauts Jessica, Drew and Oleg will return
to a planet different than the one they left
more than six months ago. Later, we stand out
under the stars in our isolated yards, waving
as the International Space Station passes over,
wishing for coronas galactic and distant, we ache
to slip free from our PPEs, form a human hug
around the earth, take a photo of us, watch it go viral.
