While picking up groceries at the nearby Walmart yesterday, this poem came to mind. This was the first time I had been inside a Walmart after they made wearing masks mandatory inside the store. The sea of expressionless faces filled me with a sense of desolation - perhaps a common one these days.
Any Common Desolation
can be enough to make you look up
at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few
that survived the rains and frost, shot
with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep
orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird
would rip it like silk. You may have to break
your heart, but it isn’t nothing
to know even one moment alive.
As I bagged my produce and household items in the self-checkout, desolate people all around waiting their turn. The store was busy but people seem not to speak unless there is a need to. Having a private conversation through a mask is difficult so perhaps we don't have those in a public place. Getting someone's attention is much harder with most of your face and their's being obscured. Once I got out of the store into the bright midday sun, I thought about any common desolation being enough to look up at things in nature that offer the sense of immutability and anchoring.
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