First Shot
March 2021
The day we get our first vaccine
starts with crow calls slid like letters under the closed door of sleep
I wake early
Step outside to a world drenched in honey tones
The grave and the long slant of mountainside above
where shadows drape the frozen land below
The day we go to get our vaccine
we wake at 6 am to drive east
bring three dogs along for the ride
cross the blue line into a red county to a clinic called Salud
who welcomed us with a bevy of emails the day before
while down in groovy Boulder, the lists of appointments felled us with their fullness
300-person waiting-lists
inaccessibility taunting from every on-line visitation
and I love writing these words
The day we go to get our vaccine
we drive through the fracking fields of amerikan freedom
where trump signs still proclaim his victory
Covid vaccines pour through friendly hands of Latinx health care workers
here in the republican land of plenty
‘cos these people are on this other side of the line
go unvaccinated so
head East, sister, and get your blessed first vaccine
The cursed spell of the plague years wraps my body
with tightening python muscles
trembling through time till suddenly
the badness broke like a fever or a sunrise
like a window we crawl through
slowly blinking,
out of this easy foxhole where we’ve hidden
we crawl on our bellies
elbows and toes pushing us
east towards the rising sun
and the loaded syringes, waving like flowers
their stalks sunk in melting snows
and future worlds pour down
like rain on this desert
It was just a day like all the others
364 days since my last public indoor appearance
Throwing water on my sleepy face from the dented basin
birds laughing from a bluebird sky above the ponderosas
sun climbing over the ridge blinds me
and I hold still, eyes closed, give thanks,
my heart a portal
an infinite bliss spreading with the tea pour
with the first sip
with the raised hand
— Me! Me! Ooh—ooh, Pick Me!—
Kissed by this sun on this morning of this new month in this old story
and I think I know the answer
my raised hand waving, tired, almost defeated
but persistant
and just like that, I am chosen.
The inevitable mechanism whirling
wagging like a finger
like a happy pup
scooping valleys from stone, arching towards freeedom
Portal! Portal! Portal!
Flying through, dropped penetrating
successive worlds without fracking fields
without covid, worlds full of generosity and health
of liberated nurses and docs holding out the shot, the shot, the shot!
Arrowing away from barricaded cities of fear and consequence
where all gods and goods privatized
falling like a chain before my new state
safe safe safe!
I been living on first or maybe second base
incited by others and the news to trust
not trusting anyway
Then suddenly freed by the crack of the bat
the high fly
and I’m running for home just ahead of the ball
or
I fall out of the sky
right on the coat-tails of the horror
It’s all metaphors and mollecules
the short-lived immortalities
the stories
shattered like that broken window
dropping me through this series of skies for days
driving east into that sun
now
back to this warmth-drenched room
and the dogs
looking up at me with wet brown eyes
waiting to see
what happens next.
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