Quarantine

Quarantine

By the time the sun touched the grass

beneath my back where I lay

beside my wife and son who seemed

to be breathing a fog of breath

I thought hung above each mouth

I knew I had died and was dead

though thinking through where I was

as if the thinking could bring me

where death is not an is

instead of where I found myself

watching my wife and son without

seeing them beside me on the ground

but knowing they were there

breathing as I was the air above

the mouths there and perhaps thinking

as I was thinking to keep myself here

where I could not be dead could not be

dead could not be anything but alive

and tracking the sun coming over the trees

even though the moon had not moved

and my wife my son and I were growing

into the grass beneath us and the moon

does not care about the bodies there

in that field on the earth at dawn

the moon cannot see and if

the moon could see it still would not care

 

 

Copyright © 2006 Brian Henry