We giggled nervously at our good luck
Moving up the half-empty jazz club to the best seats.
It began in force the next morning
Insinuating into air vents
Broadcasting in chorales of praise
7 million dead in 4 years
We, the fittest, move so quickly past
The thinning of the herd.
We move past the vacant city streets
He truly could have shot someone on 5th Avenue
No one would have seen.
Past the lines of essential workers at shift change
Dragging home to their basement showers and isolated cots
Cold compresses on their raccoon eye sockets.
Past the balconies of the entrapped
Awaiting the 5 p.m. call to gratitude.
Do any of us still marvel
At solitary figures whirling at dawn
Outstretched fingertips within a pixel of touching
Across the glowing rectangles?
At the songs of hope
Synchronizing through the turbulent airwaves?
At the masked marchers
Still calling for justice across a hibernating land?
Or those foregoing sleep to their luminescent laptops
Slowly encircling the exponential death?
Do we even pause to chuckle
At hours spent on frigid porches
Rinsing Saran-wrapped bread with 409?
We, the non-7 million
Move so quickly past.
Barbara Ogur is a retired primary care physician who spends the summer in Wellfleet.
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