Together in a Sudden Strangeness

Just look at the titles of the poems in this collection, and it's obvious 2020 was a different sort of year:

After the Apocalypse
Sequestration
Sheltering in Place
Corona Diary
I See on Zoom He's Growing...
Six Months from Patient Zero
Today, When I Could Do Nothing
At CVS Wearing a Mask I Buy Plastic Easter Eggs for My Daughters

These are not regular times. These are not regular poems. They pack a punch.

Here are a few of the lines I loved.

“...but the green disguises of God—who's on his way but
not ready to save us yet—were all I found today.”

“No longer must I be nice to anyone except the people in
this house.”

“so calm and quiet
that I wondered
if God, too,
had gone into hiding
and sheltered in place.”

“A mask falls off another mask
until there's none to don.
We manufacture more.”

“this vast and shocking viral sprawl,
infections with no end in sight.
Forgive me please. I'm thinking small.
My heart cannot accept it all.”

“I hate it—but then home
Was always a place to depart from
Or come back to, not a state of being in itself.”

“Everything is freeze-framed
Our frailties laid bare
But the daffodils are opening
And there's water and there's air.”

“Perhaps when we are gone
the mythological animals—
dragons and griffins, the beautiful lonely phoenix—
will come out of hiding”

“I love you, but can you take your sister
and please slip away from gravity
in the flying saucer of your Baa Baa black sheep?
I don't want you to see the planet this sad.”

“There is only one life.
How long will I hold mine like water in cupped hands?”