The great silence

That year spring came unnoticed.
It whispered to us from outside
in the curious languages of birds
that were normally unheard.

We had moved inside. The skies had emptied
erased of humans and their quaint terrors
as the virus lumbered across the world
in a pestilence of numbers and words.

Inquisitive observers, self-exiled
we watched the planet that we had poisoned
pressed back by the great silence.

We were prisoners locked in glass houses

trapped by an epidemic of loneliness

reading a message that nature did not need us.