My poem, After Covid, is in the current issue of the Phoenix (Pfeiffer University). Here is the poem:

After Covid

I bought my mother a clock
with two fixed hands
and a face that said
“whatever.”

And “whatever”
became a catch
phrase we used
whenever.

A metaphor
for the pandemic years—
locked away and staring
at a clock

that might as well
have made the time up.
Today I listened
to a single

rivulet of water
drip from my front gutter
as my pulse
tried to synch

with the rhythmic
sound of single drops
beating the steps below.
There is a rhythm

to life
that eases our passage.
Those who never find it
we call mad.

Perhaps we are all mad now
scratching around like chickens
to recover a rhythm
that vanished with the virus.