***

No toasting long-past Valentines this fifth year

Time to enact a different rite — called City once again

three digits pressed again, more robochat again,

at last heard cool Clarice coolly explain

(though only after pressing questioning) that no,

No, City workers never came on weekends

Nor holidays, which one of those long waiting days

Turns out, had been — a newish one, to celebrate

sweet family togetherness and kinfolk fun

Uplifting thought for locked-down lonely days

Reminder of what other people have

The City . . . also did not come on other kinds of days

Long hours passed by frosty-grimy window pane

Sun rose and set and rose a few more times

Time to think, consider all the threats

— of flood, freeze, bankruptcy, invasion,

exposure, infection from ensuing work

death from simple shame of solitude

or shock of violation of the same...

Requisite entries by danger strangers, now enjoined

Frighteningly masked, deadly seen mask-free.

Implanted now inside my seething brain

Health officer's sad face — her throbbing/sobbing voice

Imploring all to "just do more" — more ... what?

More distance, three metres, not just two?

More solitude enforcement everywhere,

More scary rent-a-cops, glowering in corner stores

More multi-masks to layer up three deep

(or more, more, do more!) — and most of all

More interdiction — no outsiders in your home

If you are single, if you live alone

No one but you to enter home at all

The only way, it seems, to now do more.

Okay. Okay. I get it, have complied.

But now I must bring strangers in, it seems

Not up to me, for nothing now is up to me.

Connection tests, kinds of metal, types of pipes,

To find out where what flows, and why

All this is required, all that is law

No choice, no insight, no timeline . . . no control

***