Circles

Poem by Dana Littlepage Smith

We gauge things differently now
as we walk down the street:
eyeing up personal space.

A man whose dreads unfurl,
mouths his thanks for the room
I make as he legs it past me.

Vectors of responsibility
wiggle, billow, go plop
in a puddle of resounding echoes.

Will I hurt you? Will you infect me?
We drift along, too close or lost
in lock-down’s leaf fall.

Gentle pandemonium runs in our park,
where figures are painted
an arrow marked between:

Two metres, scribbled out.
Two trillion… chalked
with planets spiralling off.

Standing on one side of the glass,
I finger my mother’s hand. We miss
each other closely. Remain untouched.

Schools contain new orbits.
Bubbles pop, spheres implode:
You mean I can kill gran?

Vigilance, a globe on thin shoulders
falls. Strangers stare when we embrace.
How many months of air-hugs

are enough, until they aren’t?
What to do when a kid stops dead
and screams when he rounds this corner

into us? Circles on circles.
An ever widening whole. Where we are
one, where our new truth comes home

to roost on a basket of eggs
next to bats where the man
who walks by them, readies to fly

around our small blue orb.
He gentles in to our green isle
where Love’s circumference shrinks

as it grows wide. He bends to kiss
my cheek; I kiss him on the other.
This is our home.

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