Going for a Walk Around the Block During the Pandemic

I step out into a rain-washed morning
cloth mask tucked in my pocket.

At quarter to seven the neighborhood is quiet.
First buds of the year on my rosebush.

Next door’s Dalmatian maybe died—
haven’t seen her in months, poor old thing.

Around the corner, huge clumps of iris
lift purple flags above my head.

White dogwood and white lilac
carpet the sidewalk with late-spring snow.

I stop for ceanothus, pale blue and fragrant,
admire the yellow-gold of the last azaleas.

The new house on the back street hasn’t sold.
Real estate was cooling off, even before

the Bone Man came into our streets.
(Get out of this poem, Bone Man. I didn’t invite you.)

They landscaped it nicely. But look:
the flowerbeds are full of oak seedlings!

Someone’s going to have to dig them all out.
I can’t even blame squirrels,

just gravity and the big oak by the sidewalk
which shrugs, dousing me with night-rain.

“Did you think the rest of the world
had stopped living?”

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