What will we remember when it’s over? 

Those years when the sky shone like a dull pearl 

The Zoom pixel glitch and tangled up cords 

Lessons without their teachers. Less is more. 

A prescient pivot or so much lost time? 

Like wool, grief itches deep, doesn’t know time. 

Threadbare hearts die a million times over. 

Seeking trodden soil, sore feet find a moor. 

Yawning days stretch to tearing, knit tugs purl. 

Family trees gnarl and wilt. Samaras twirl. 

Lifeline of forced air til they yank the cords. 

My daily soundtrack’s by his vocal chords, 

Another soul with which to pass the time. 

But mostly, the endless click and scroll. “Twirl!” 

The show host bleats til she pitches over. 

Your turn to pick the next thing, mi amore: 

A mobster falls quiet, a clam clasps a pearl. 

Steel boots clack on marble. There’s always more 

Anger on the chyron, firewood cords 

Tossed on starving flames, the core pearl 

Never extinguished. What’s real in a time 

Of half-truths? The wool isn’t pulled over. 

Joy is a revolutionary twirl. 

We’re all at rope’s end but the raw threads twirl 

And fray apart. The ragged hole grows more. 

Blinds shut, porches empty. Don’t come over. 

We’re tied to each other with slacking cords. 

Riposte repost. It might be the end-time 

But nowhere to go, nowhere to wear the pearl 

Earrings. A slight smile—holy glint of pearl, 

The only incandescence. What earth twirl 

Will halt leaping deer in airborne hang time 

When the snowmelt evaporates no more? 

Whales moan and move south, striking the wrong chords 

Above ghostly coral, pale and picked over. 

What if we chose to cherish the shared pearl 

Of our presence over the market’s twirl? 

Either we demand more, or live in accord.