A Tunnel has Openings on Both Ends

According to recent assessments from the eager 
to travel again, have drinks with friends, shed

the year's wardrobe of almost sackcloth 
and ashes—we've come through to the other

side. But what is the other side if not a reverse-
engineered vision of this one; a looking glass 

in which (we pray) each full-blown tragedy of
the past year shrinks back to what it wasn't 

before the unfathomable struck? What is any
opening ahead if not a wound struck by light, 

an animal flashing bands of color under the glassy 
skin of water? I want to believe the tunnel 

through which we travel doesn't go on 
forever; that nothing waits at the other end 

except the future's beautiful mouth, not one 
sharpening its bite or waiting to tear us to pieces.