Monday in a purple moment, 

the cloud cover not quite a shroud. 

In the little park the silver light 

falls on mothers chasing tots 

across slabs of lawn just mown 

by town employees grinning 

through scruffs of weekend beard. 

The blistering hues of flowers  

around the rim of the park 

fence the children from traffic 

on Grove Street and the surge 

of the carefully dammed river. 

We watch the mothers dancing 

about with their giggling kids 

and discuss the lack of future. 

Maybe the virus will grind down 

the population till we return 

to subsistence farming and starve 

with genuine classical dignity. 

Maybe our feckless politics 

will trigger nuclear war and scorch 

the last of rhetoric forever. 

We can only be ourselves— 

you with your flamethrower gaze, 

me sheepish enough for a shepherd. 

The park boils over in the glare. 

The hottest summer on record, 

and we must mask against disease

that hardly ever speaks aloud.             

Undaunted by the invisible, 

the children perk in flimsy clothes 

while their mothers trample the earth 

the way mothers always have, 

chasing after the children who 

will outrun them all their lives.