T-U-G

Twenty-one days into quarantine,

he dm’d a stranger,

against whom he had been playing Scrabble,

to ask her how she was getting on, where she was.

He could have guessed; he reads the news.

What he wanted was to put his bucket into the well,

to feel a tug on the other end of the rope,

as Jack Gilbert describes in “The Abandoned Valley”.

She did not write back,

but the next word she put down was “D-I-R-E”.

He wanted to respond with

H-U-G, or S-O-O-T-H-E, or even H-E-R-E,

but all he could play was “K-N-O-B”.

That would have to be enough

for now.