Still . . . must venture out, must try to move

to mimic forms and modes of being real

The date burns through my mind, a silenced flame

No one knows now, no one senses or recalls

my ugly secret as I walk and smile at eager dogs

and chatty passers-by, pitch my voice high

in brightly girlish greeting as I stride on

A gesture to the day is in my mind

It should be marked and honoured, somehow

though just by me, in silence, secretly

When I reach shopping streets, perhaps could seek

some tribute to dead love, some flower maybe?

Not lavender, something else, something he loved

Or not a flower, maybe? but what?

a hateful pointlessness hovers there

A why do anything /what does it prove/ just more consumption vibe

Yet we believed in ritual, honoured it

credited its healing force in human days

At garden store a street display is bright

shelves standing out on sidewalk to seduce each passer-by

Pausing there, I look at sundry little plants

Potstuffers they are termed, in rainbow shades

six different plantlets, pretty blooms and leaves

Could mass them all together, see them every day

think of them as somehow his, as part of him?

Then hummingbird's lunch, so-called, pinpoint coral blossoms

Attracts my errant eye — he loved wild creatures

The wanton birds and beasts, quite giddily

And so I hover, somewhat like a hummingbird

though not so bright and not aloft

with small pots clutched up in my hands, a long time there

Then — put them back, pick them up again, some several times.

Feel blocked, in part the covid rules — no entry at the entryway

an exit-only now, line-up out back instead, a mask required

within this store, and in their back courtyard outside as well

(though not by latest regs, just in this plant-filled place

each venue differs now, re-education waits at every turn)

Here a contact sheet to sign, a queue outside

while headcount of their current inside customers proceeds —

as well, nothing streetside offered to convey these six small pots

gripped awkward now in both my too-small hands, so

how to mask, glove, sign, sanitize etc.

as all these tasks come on one by one by one?

***