Covid Easter (Dunkle)

At 8pm strangers howl from their homes.
We can’t see them, and, because our valley

bends sound, we can’t trust where their voices come
from. In this way, their cries are ghosts, are fog

from our lost sea. Come morning the dew will
weigh down the grass in the field between us.

Will brighten the forget-me-nots, and red
tongues of camellias that cover the bush

in my dead mother’s yard. I will hide a chain
of riddles written on notes for my sons

all over our property. At the stone-
jawed creek, in the hollow of the pear tree

split by lightning. At the edge of the woods
where they meet us with their darkness. I will

try to decipher what this all means. This
empty valley we’ve stepped into waiting

for sound (bird song, or howl) to answer back
even though we have no way to see it.

Iris Jamahl Dunkle's Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer is forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press. Her poetry collection West : Fire : Archive is forthcoming from Mountain/ West Poetry Series. Previous books include Interrupted Geographies, Gold Passage, and There's a Ghost in this Machine of Air.