Sunset at the Reservoir (a Covid Poem)

On a January evening,
cut-glass wind stinging,
the gap where a storm
dropped hundred-foot pines
trumpets a pending show.
West toward the reservoir
a stone-littered trail

clambers beside a rushing aqueduct.
The pond, a cellophane scrim of ice
traps sky in its clear container.

Since spring,
endurance measures in increments.
Fourteen days of quarantine,
six weeks since I saw our daughter,
eight months since you passed.
But here, by frozen water,
minutes fade to 

sable brush strokes,
filaments of yellow gold, 

arctic pink to blush—

a gradient wash
as the horizon renders

one timeless certainty.

The light is always better
after the sun goes down.

Liza Carens Salerno