Musings in a Time of Crisis XX

This is Memorial Day 2020:

flags lowered countrywide
to half-mast, our polluted beaches

thick with unmasked mouths,
which, unlike Bartholdi's lady

in New York Harbor, fail to
beckon us to be our better selves.

Told not to come to Baltimore,
the man in the White House plays

a round, the first time since March,
he claims, he's chased that

little white ball some
distance over newly open greens,

his shorts-suited self trailed
by squads in shades, phones in ears.

Days ago, he ordered churches
open, declared them essential,

as if our prayers for the dead,
at rest in urns on our shelves,

need four walls and a pew
to reach any known gods.

Tuesday, our three days
of mourning up, cookouts over,

we'll go back to collecting a mess
of numbers, thoughts of

the dying and the dead, already
nearing one hundred thousand

names yet to be inked in news-
paper print, lasting only so long as

the time it takes to doomscroll
our way to a different page.