An Abundance Of Caution Poem by George Witte

Go watchfully in humid fog
emerging on the first warm day

with skeins of birds and dogs unleashed
to race through greenery, alive.

Proceed as if on shattered glass
around suspicious passersby

eyeing each other's mask and gloves,
give way or cross the street devoid

of traffic, nowhere to commute,
on holiday but isolate.

Immunity begets a herd
evolving to cooperate,

walled colony insured against
collapse until the barrier

erodes with mutability,
the slow or sudden shift awry

that ravens every virgin cell.
Before a cenotaph of shoes

abandoned to the elements
dogs race unleashed through greenery

or scavenge ownerless in fog
emerging on the first warm day.

From An Abundance of Caution (Unbound Edition Press,2023)