COVID Plus 4

COVID Plus 4

Four years ago
April 21, 2020
No planes
In the sky
No people
On Vanderbilt Avenue
Alone.

Same today
2024
Afternoon
April cold
Gray clouds
A pale silver sun
Over a bankrupt luxury condo.

Now a few people
On the sidewalk.

Four years ago
None
Me
Alone
Today
Out for a walk
Alone
Same
As four years ago.

We survived that crisis
And others
Fifteen thousand years ago
The Ice Age
A wall of ice
A mile high
Over Clinton Hill
10,000 of us left.
Homo erectus

We will survive
We have been here before.
World population
2050
500 million
I will be one of us
97 years old
In Thailand
With my children
Grandchildren
Great-grandchildren
My wives
Rice paddies
Green
Running west to Burma
And the setting sun.
No planes in the sky
Only the stars.