IMPOSSIBLE BOTTLE

Now that the jet stream of tourism has been stanched
like blood from a wound, history’s monuments

lie quiet as a postcard on a desk:
Coliseum-as-cow-pasture, its ivory crown

grandstanding between those horse-drawn wagons
and shepherdesses dazed in a wood of columns

of Pinelli’s vedute romane. Today, the selfies
self-medicate. Echo of lion’s roar and martyr’s cry

are all you can make out against this riddle of sky.
The future is a phone call that won’t quite go through.

“Operator, is anyone there?” you blurt, but reception
is lousy, the earpiece hollow. You never get voice, presence,

Ich und Du. I and thou. Just I, one meter away from every
other I. Safety in distance. Danger in numbers. Chalk up

the days since life seemed normal. Calendar etched black with Xs.
Thank G-d, crank god, shipwrecked among stars, all of us afloat

in the same impossible bottle. Toss us a link to the future
& quick. It’s crowded and our world is going under.