–for Thelma and Louise
Tonight, the sky is pulling its endless wagon of stars
across a canvas of cracked black paint, the constellations
falling into place: Bear, Harp, Job’s Coffin. Job who died
old and full of days. And though he suffered senselessly
in the final chapter he gets his wife, his children, the land
he tended back. The original happy ending. And what
of our world’s suffering? Descendants, as we are, of Job,
the doors of our workplaces chained, locked, our families
sick and dying, our lives lived alone, drowning in obscurity.
Will we find and name a new constellation after the virus?
The Contagion Constellation? The Corona Dusk? I suppose
I began to miss the movies first, gathering in the dark,
my shoulders brushing up against my animal kind,
all of us exchanging breath, our stranger’s hearts beating
as one heart as the huge women on screen clasped hands
and drove off the edge of the Grand Canyon. And with a last
kiss the screen turns white, the camera’s aperture narrowing,
the house lights coming up, walking toward the open doors,
a herd of souls who had all seen the same thing, scene after scene,
laughing our herd laughter, crying our hard-human tears.
