Metaphor

METAPHOR

 Last night, a theater company 
 zoomed a Hanukkah play 
 written by a woman I met
 in a zoomed playwrights’ group.
 My friend Kathy spends her evenings
 taping the alto parts of Christmas anthems.
 My husband’s coffee group zooms.
 We see the grandchildren once a week
 running around in their backyard
 or sitting at their art table,
 or practicing reading and singing.
 

 This morning, I drove to town.
 Stopped a minute for two runners
 on opposite sides of the road. 
 (Something that used to irritate me.)
 Masked women, still running together.
 

 I went to Old People’s Hour 
 at the food coöp: silent shoppers,
 all those kids stocking shelves.
 

 I listened to my Christmas playlist 
 on the drive home: Revels,
 Paul Winter, the Polish carols
 from my Warsaw cousins. 
 All jolly till “Lulajże Jezuniu,”
 a lullaby the homesick Chopin
 quoted in Scherzo No. 1.
 I had to pull over to cry.
 

 We’re so sad.
 And so brave.
 

 Yesterday my new friend Sherry told me 
 she saw a single blade of grass
 rising up through a cow pat in a field.  
 Not a poetic image like, say,
 a young oak sprouting in leaf mould.
 But still. 
 Can you think of a better metaphor?
 Perhaps something even less polite.  
 They spread manure on fields.
 Cowshit gets on your boots.
 Whatever you call it, it’s full of seeds.
 It’s food for seeds.
 For seeds.