After the CDC’s Recommended Two Weeks from Final Dose of Covid-19 Vaccine by Joann Renee Boswell

welcome drips weird
from these immunized hands

we embrace at my doorstep
and just like that

you step inside, shrug
off your coat, pass into

our physical lives
we laugh over shared popcorn

buttered fingers grip beer
we slip into remembered rhythms

we are chaplain / poet
scholar / professor

we flow back in a Spring rush
flooding the banks like nature

there is only ease
coming back together

all those months pool

behind us, deep with relentless caution

but we can swim now
and it feels wildly unchanged



Joann Renee Boswell, the author of Cosmic Pockets (Fernwood Press, 2020), is a teacher, mother, photographer and poet currently living in Camas, WA with her husband and three children. She loves rainy days filled with coffee, books, handholding, moody music and sci-fi shows. Read more at joannrenee.com