Prescription: Isolation
No man is an island?
Go to your room.
Sweat for three days
through your clothes, and gaze
at the sky idling
through its wardrobe.
Wait, while species-wide delirium
registers tremors in the earth’s heart.
Dream, with Ravel, of the radio’s
skirling fantasies, one ear awake
to the bells tolling over Italy.
Angels stand guard outside your door,
and in the afternoon bring tea, hot,
and cuts of melon, cold
and sweet as spring.
Tomorrow, you will get dressed,
push yellow periwinkles and green sea-glass
across the world of your desk,
and be glad. Call home.
So stilled, our hurtling souls
forget themselves, and remember.
Image from Quarantine by Patricio Cassinoni.