It has been a year

and here I am,

sitting at my teacher’s desk,

tasting coffee, black and rich,

as morning mist dissipates

from the field where children play.

We will hire a sitter, my wife and I,

go out for a night,

eat food in a restaurant

(three quarter capacity)

where we will overcome nerves,

remember menus and tip well, and

we will give thanks to

something, someone,

fate, God, the nurse who

stabbed salvation to our veins…

We breathe,

we taste and smell and feel,

we see this spring,

and I will never understand

why we have lost so little.