She said, The clouds look like birds' wings

They are not birds’ wings.
The clouds are cold fire.
Titanium and dark slate churning with fury
Casting darkness over mountains and sea
And Spanish cities gone silent.
Sorrow moaning, deep.
Winds bang gates, pound windows,
rain seeps through pin holes,
cries cold lava down wide streets
to the rocky ocean.
No voice breaks above the roar.
There aren’t any anywhere
We are inside.

A sixty-year old women dresses herself as a goddess, spangled and tie dye draped, dances sexually before her iphone camera, posts on Facebook.  A 20-year old women arches her back in pink spandex wear, exaggerating her butt, drops her long blond ponytail down her back begins her exercise video to post for her followers. A 50-year old man records his deepest voice in guided meditation for his new app. The New York Times offers lockdown recipes for homemade breads and exotic foods. Instagram drools images of sexy people in their mirrors, in their bedrooms.  A teenage boy jacks off to online porn.

The echo of us is echoing back.
The sky and sea and earth repeating our words.
We cannot redact the sound.

To pull air across the glass in her lungs is painful but life. She can only see the smell of death, the masks and tanks and gloves and glasses. The bagged bodies moving around her. No one familiar. And outside nations act like roosters in a cock fight.  Leaders point stubby fingers. Young children line up for food in downtown Los Angeles, not enough for one let alone a families and pigs are slaughtered and burned in North Dakota, milk poured into cold soil near Alberta. Bellies in Spanish migrant camps balloon.

Those are not birds’ wings.
The echo of us is echoing back.

Inside 100s of millions wile away days on their electronics, game playing, past tense reality TV watching.  Looking into Narcissus’ pond for a reflection of beauty.  Other millions stare at empty kitchen cupboards.

Through the window I see you sitting like a mountain. I see you listening to the echo.  You are sad. You are tired. Sit, dear friend.  Sit stranger. Sit in painful truth, clouds overhead, rain crying, sun scalding. Sit in this new world.  

Grateful the birds have not left.