Today, in a sonnet

I hacked at rose bushes that wanted their branches to ramble,
not brace the house in a chokehold.
A crochet flower refused to bloom in my scratched hands.
I overheard a government official talking about
the price of petrol, his voice zooming down the corridor.
My own zoom meeting maintained my social distance, dropping me
out of a work meeting after 15 minutes.
My dinner sang, a neat composition of remainder vegetables.

I talked about the rule of law with my daughter at the dinner table.
She wrote how people sometimes scratch away rights
when they are scared.
I watched a policewoman shuffle her feet impatiently, as
an ex-cardinal was about to be released under the cover of
the rule of our law, and helicopter cameras.