B.J. Hollars
What if the vaccine was as simple as
freshly baked bread?
Or the cool side of the pillow?
Or true moss on a rain-slicked rock?
What if the cure was discovered
not in the labs or the trials
but in the broken spine of your grandfather’s
favorite book?
When was the last time you felt a spider
web blossom across your body?
Or drank deep from the well water
Sprung forth from the rusty pump?
I am in search of familiar terrain
in the places I’ve forgotten:
in the frothy cream of coffee cups
and garden gloves worn away at their webbing.
Small comforts add up
if you let them. So why hinder
something as elemental
as a sidewalk after a storm?
If chemistry class taught me anything
it had something to do with covalence.
Those bashful electrons bumbling, hat-in-hand,
ever hopeful they possessed something worth sharing.
Not for their own sake, but for
the sake of one another.
Giving and receiving their blessings
as naturally as birdsong.
Look, I am as much scientist as mathematician,
so don’t trust me when I claim to
know the calculus of contagion.
Still. I will show you my work
in the tree bark from the river birch
on the far side of the house
near the firewood where potato
bugs prepare for peace.
I won’t sugar-coat it:
Every day is its own devastation.
Yet somehow, the dog
still pulls at her leash.
B.J. Hollars is a writer, teacher, husband, father, and and dog walker.