Walking The Loop At Playa Vista On Sunday, Father's Day, During The Pandemic Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

The dogs
are as enthusiastic as ever,
updating their olfactory maps,
seemingly unaware,
or at least untroubled,
by Trump's Saturday rabble rousing
in Tulsa.

The morning marine layer
cools, calms, and enshrouds
the floodplain.
A small Chinese American boy
and his smaller sister,
parentless,
conscientiously wait on their bikes
for the WALK sign
at an intersection
where there are
no cars.

So few walkers
are about
that they seem
the survivors
of a plague
which has annihilated
90 or 95%
of the population.

Our thoughts turn
to the scene
in On the Beach
where the submarine
sails
all the way to San Diego
to see who's operating
a cryptic telegraph key.

No one.
A window shade
flapping in the wind
moving the key
at random
is the only survivor.
Everyone in San Diego, in California,
in the Northern Hemisphere, is dead.

How peaceful the world becomes
with no people.
Is nuclear or viral annihilation
the tragedy
humans make them out to be?
Dogs argue
otherwise.