Today, I am the dawn
looking for the sun to rise.
The stretch of my aging torso
like the light in the sky
remembering itself anew,
weight of my legs, the lifting
of night, crack of my ankles,
sound of an awaking earth into day,
proof I am alive. I love
stepping outside my house
into this winter air, cold as frost.
Half of my face masked
for a virus that haunts me,
masked to prevent the freezing
of my lips, my lungs, to block
the taste of winter dew. My breath,
as routine as the coming new year.
I pace my walk, feel ever grateful
to gravity, for holding me
tight to earth.
Dried leaves shiver in the wind.
With my hat and mask,
I am unrecognizable.
There is an emptiness,
an anonymity I didn’t ask for.
I have been walking again
as if in a dream, having trouble
sussing out reality. I reach out
to what is frail and floating
at the brittle base of night
and what we least expect
to appear in between greetings
of hugs and handshakes,
our shoulder-to-shoulder
staff meetings, playground squeals,
the ding of elevators
full of strangers chatting
about the weather, time,
new restaurants with green chile.
Even as the sun appears,
its light in my eyes, interrupting
what I want to be a dream,
I am here drifting
across the sky
searching for gravity.
-Liza Wolff-Francis
Saturday's Sirens 