Cerulean Freedom

My brother and I,
after being shoehorned into a lock-down
for fifty-six days, step out for the first time
from the safety of our red roofed sanitized home.

The air is still, the hillock silent,
no birdsong trills in the air,
no leaves susurrate in the heat.
Weeds sprout as counters of missing
footfalls on the wilting grass.

I stretch my arm numbed with ennui,
twist my body and raise my eyes skyward,
like a yogi pegged on a single leg,
at the edge of the slate-water road

Piggybacking on endorphins
air rushes into my lungs
as the hillocks take a deep breath

My brother in the middle of a calisthenics routine
launches from the springboard of a browning Earth.
White piping on his black sneakers and matching socks
gleam against cottony clouds.
He shakes free, for two seconds,
the shackles of breathless gravity
as he reaches for the cerulean freedom of the sky—

A sky, no virus can cloud
A sky, rustling and alive
A sky, filled with our songs of hope and life