To the Sheltering Island

At the time there was a ferry to the island. We walked the
shore waiting to board. Even then my body was brewing a
pestilence I ignored until I couldn’t. When you say, almost
matter-of-factly, Our country’s sick, and the world-spirit’s
sick, I remember in my bones the early years I ailed. Now
Covid scrapes off the layers that buffer us from fear.
Because today the sun hovers—a rare orangey-pink sphere
in a sky-blue wall like a porthole—I think of the Gulf that
day, how the water shone, a blue-glass vase with its rose
of sun. How a memory of beauty is its semblance, not
counterfeit, a trace of the heal-all that’s prayer’s hinge,
wrought as the conductor conveys—from one to another
nerve by meticulous touch—a positive charge. I gazed at
the lucent waves, felt a well-being I’d deem over the years
by losing.