Reciting Poems to Each Other in a Difficult Time

It might have looked as if we stayed
in our respective squares—
nine separate rooms made of pixels—
but for an hour the poems we shared leaped
through the screen and into our bloodstream
until all our lines were gloriously blurred
and our wounds were gently tended
by the medicine of Berry's dayblind stars
and Wellwood's ferocious dance of no hope,
Hopkins's shining from shook foil
and Roethke's wondering Which I is I?

In another time, there would have been
a fire at the center. Someone would play a drum.
But in this time, I felt it inside me, the fire,
as poems blazed to meet the great cold.
I felt it inside me, the human drum,
that reminds me the heart beats
not for itself, but the world.
For an hour we spooned each other
the honey of poetry. Alone now,
I still taste it, unfiltered and raw,
this astonishing sweetness on my lips,
this salt of lyric communion.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2024/11/09/reciting-poems-to-each-other-in-a-difficult-time/