Electric Blue

in the years of Covid

by Barbara Southard

There are mornings when blue takes over,

as if nothing else exists but a divine sense 

of place on this spinning globe,

then vaporizes into the faint filigree of dawn

when the cat purrs you into wakefulness. 

You put the kettle on, grind coffee beans

in a silent house, a chorus of birds 

now singing in hazed light, smell

of almost-rain seeping in under the door.

Outside, the world holds menace,

a contagion that comes and goes

of its own choosing. We venture out,

scurry back to the safety of home

where we can look out the window, watch

a bee burrow in the center of a flower,

soft dewed petals enclosing her

like an infant cradled in the arms of its mother.