Eye

by Bruce Bond

In a time that draws closer
as we go,
the well at the center of town
carried a fever
that spread across the county
to drain the resources
of the funeral home and its attendant
garden.
If only they had known.

So public works filled the shaft
with earth and laid a stone
across the mouth,
a template for a vandal
who, camouflaged in dark,
painted an eye across the lid,
an effigy of many
who came and went.

Every time the city painted over
the eye,
a new one appeared,
as if it floated through earth,
through the dead well
beneath us,
like a song inside a tunnel,
a cry inside a song.

Foreclosed shops along the square
tell you,
this place could use a little music.

Something to call the people back
from their quarantine habits.
Eye after eye
floated through the halo
of the one before,
to coax a child to stand
above the giant circle
and look down.

Some asked why.
You could hear them whisper.
Others thankful they survived.
Some turned to the stranger
beside them
and, thinking her a neighbor,
glimpsed her face.
Those who remembered
less and less paused,
looked,
and, as shadows fell
to earth and through,
they looked again.