During the Pandemic

Outside the classroom window –
soft slanting snow.

Inside the classroom – faces
feasting on an animation film.

The semester is drawing to a close,
a quiet festiveness in the darkness there.

I had called you the week before
to let you know these faces of spring
would feed my spirit yet another year.
Their faces coupled with your joy
almost make the wanderer
forget his wandering.

On the 1st day of the holiday,
rising late to the bedroom window’s
soft slanting snow,
I dress quietly
and make my way down the country road
to the coffee shop humming contentment,
calming tones and textures
of a smoky, inviting wood.

Along the way I see
the rustic houses
half-hugged by a hill of pine,
and I know the hills will be waiting,
graces of fresh spaces,
crunching snow, glistening rock,
carpet of pine needles
welcoming the hiker’s heart.

The hills, like home,
will be there,
and so will
the swill
of rice wine,
as will
Linky, my South African colleague
living 2 doors down.
I can knock on her door
with some chocolate or Rooibos tea
and tease her until she
consents to cook dinner for me.

All this almost makes
the wanderer
forget his wandering.

Two years now already
since I’ve been back, sequestered,
jobless and companionless,
in the city from which you’d called
and where you raised me,
the city now dead to me.

Wherever I go, no longer
will I call you once or twice a month,
you who have not as yet
visited me in a dream.

Just outside your living room window
next to the chair where you sat
falls the soft slanting snow,
and in the shadow
of the swelling pandemic, lost lives,
the wanderer barely survives,
relishing that winter, hills, faces of spring,
remembering too well his wandering.

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