Dave Bonta writes about being separated from his wife during the pandemic: she is in London, he is in Pennsylvania, and they meet only through a screen each day. The prose passages tell small stories. She describes a frightening moment when a stranger spat at people from his bicycle, and then she carries the speaker, on her device, outside to watch neighbours clap for health care workers. He sees it all from atop a rubbish bin, a funny and slightly helpless vantage point.
The two short haiku sit between these scenes like pauses for breath. The first, about stopping the car to watch ducks, suggests a person trying to absorb unsettling news by looking at something calm. The last turns a pandemic phrase, "social distance," into a gentle pun about the open road and the space between the couple.
The mood is mixed: anxiety, tenderness, and dry humour. The clapping is messy and brief, yet she says it was "really great," and the poem seems to agree that small shared moments matter.