Poem: Pandemic Moon

Looking down at us
From an enormous distance
A cold piece of stone
Dust-covered, desert, barren—
 
Yet from where I sit, a beacon.

A nightlight of comfort 
For those of us
Up all night,
Too tired to fall asleep—
Too wakeful to stop moving, 
Moment to moment
Unable to cease,
Our minds awhirl, 
We look up—
 
Past windy branches 
And threads of cloud, fog,
A bright circle in the sky.
Up there: truly alone.
A paradise in time of pandemic.
 
But: it is an inhuman place,
Designed to kill visitors.

No, it’s a dream (or nightmare)
To believe that humans,
No matter the risk they pose,
Hate they bring, anger they provoke,
Can live without each other.

And so we look up, from down below.
 
A friend once said
I must be a perfectionist
Because I loved round things
And wore, in school, a round ring
Filled with a large orb of stone.
She traced it with her finger,
And said, “You see?
It never stops. It represents
Infinity.”
 
 
-       Meredith Alexander Kunz, April 2020