COVID Poem #1 – Set

I left work today. “We should be home,”
I said, concerned about sharing tools,
the communal shed. Non-essential stuff,
I shrug, and ask if he will leave as well.

The grass grows, the crops need watering,
the weeds green between – I have to, he vows.
Pandemic. Sanitise. Just sounds to him, dissipating,
lost to breeze, birdsong, and spade hitting stone.

He bends down, unearths it with both hands.
What’s that doing in there, he mutters, and lugs
it to one side, then falls back down to work.

The picture is still there. I can’t shake it: a man
and his sweat married to soil, the sun pressed at his neck.