Twitter of wings
Ruffle of feathers
Petite gray brown song swallows
Flitting from tree to feeder
Strutting crows scavenging
Arrive at a time
You can set your watch by
Yellow bellied finches
With regal crowns
Fly from bough to chair
The blue winged hummingbird
Comes so close
I think he will alight my head
Thinking it is a nest
The Bushtits
Who conference in the fig tree
Jabbering in hushed voices
Waning sun
I have come to know them
In the time of Covid
In the millisecond
When Covid slammed
Into us like a meteor
Unexpected
Time expanded
Contracted, stood still
Like a heart and lung
Forgetting to beat, breathe
In regular intervals
Gone were the familiar
Demarcation of spaces
Providing meaning
Delineation
Variation
Intimacy altered
Missing the presence
Essence of being with
Two bodies
In a containing environment
In the time of Covid
We adapted
To virtual reality
Or voices without bodies
Sometimes unraveling new meanings
New Intimacies
Sometimes bearing
Glitches, disruptions
Awkwardness, visual overload
Staring into each other’s faces
As well as our own
Creative adaptations
Given our limitations
By text, phone, zoom
Masked
Unmasked
Indoor, outside
At times encountering
A deafening yearning so painful
It cut flesh
I have come to know these
In the time of Covid
