I thought I published this poem a few weeks ago….since then so much has happened regarding racism in this country, so much needs and has needed attention.
I will post this poem and am working on one for these times.
Regarding my Corona poem, I wrote it for Anne, my mother-in-law who passed away during this time, and for Bill, my music teacher, and Wendy, who reached out after years, and for all.
Corona
I keep thinking of the word fugue,
as in a fugue state.
I’ve never used it before but it feels fitting now
It just sounds bad, the twin brother of dirge,
the step sister of purge.
A fugue is a state or period of loss of awareness of one's identity, often coupled with flight from one's usual environment.
Corona reminds me of the word halo
and yes, the beer.
Mexico summer before my senior year of college.
Cerveza chasing lime and salt between finger and thumb,
I used alcohol to numb that I was in limbo that year,
not believing I could be loved.
This Cinco de Mayo there were stacks of the golden bottles
in the grocery, creating an Arch de Triumph.
I see coronas sometimes, when I close my eyes,
rings of light around people, like neon tubes,
outlining.
We leave our home to walk these days and spring mocks us,
the maple and cherry trees are wearing bright lipstick, stay out late clubbing.
I protest my increased domesticity by making breakfast
for dinner three nights in a row, waffles, then eggs with white rice,
then an omelet with chanterelle mushrooms my daughter foraged in the woods.
I mark my hours with beverages
(a progression from tea to coffee to smoothies, an occasional cocktail and back to tea)
and don’t wear anything without an elastic waist.
I am a therapist and allowed to keep working remotely.
B.C. some clients are newly single, trying to get sober, overworked.
D.C. they are steadfast, an inspiration, some over and some underworked,
The later are pregnant with creativity,
pregnant with now-that-I-finally-have-downtime-I-shoulds,
and are three become pregnant with babies!
In my own family, my oldest two sons and their partners are also expecting,
I wear a face mask for my unborn grandchildren.
While counseling clients by video I fidget,
not being able to see my clients’ bodies, I must fill in the gaps,
I rub my feet together to generate needed sparks of connection.
When I speak to them on the phone,
I light candles in their honor and play with the wax.
At the end of the day, my eyes are tunneled
and yet Telehealth offers endless opportunities,
clients from Spokane to Seattle! from Whidbey Island to Wenatchee!
After my sessions, I edit my closet,
whittling clothes that serve only one purpose,
silky pajama pants are repurposed as credible bottoms for Zoom.
I peruse my shelf of poetry books
and open each to a random page, if I don’t like the poem,
I try another. If I can’t connect after three tries
I place the book lovingly in a paper bag for donation.
This packed shelf has provided ballast for two decades
and now it feels important to be less moored.
Tonight the moon is waxing again,
poetry comes after a long sabbatical and I reflect a month ago,
with children sheltering newly home from college,
my son had a photography assignment and we noted the moonrise,
drove away from our cedar trees in search.
Lunar landscapes never look as good in the eye of the camera.
The beauty of some people, sighted wild animals,
suns and moons, often resist capture.
For the first time in years, I read the news,
bookending my days with a google search
for coronavirus wa, coronavirus usa, coronavirus world.
A man salsa dances in the mirror,
on New York city rooftops people do yoga, paint,
practice the toss of a tennis ball serve.
A fugue is associated with certain forms of hysteria and epilepsy.
I am trying to discern which are my stories to tell
and decide it is those that have pitched tents in the clearings of my heart.
A video of people young and old,
peeking from Italian apartments is narrated by Italian voices,
some seniors say “I have lived a full life” and are less afraid of dying.
I see a man’s toddler run to embrace his father newly home from work.
Because Dad has not yet changed out of his medical scrubs,
he fearfully yells Noooo!, telling his son to wait.
The father then collapses in tears.
Two medical providers in New York commit suicide.
Suddenly my missing, writing in bakeries and thrift shopping, is mute.
A client is haunted by the footage just released
of two white men gunning down an African American man,
Ahmend Arbery, who was jogging in his neighborhood.
She struggles for days after watching,
yet feels bearing witness is essential, homage, it honors the deceased man’s life.
This word Essential has become,
with sheltering and flattening, common vocabulary.
As our world contracts to the most basic of needs, food and caregiving,
we find many brown and black skinned people, a majority of women,
are working and risking the most, being paid and protected the least.
In the parking lot of our local hospital, I held my sobbing husband.
His dying mother was on the 8th floor in a comfort care unit.
Her journey out of this world took place
from Good Friday to the Monday after Easter,
two and a half days longer than visitors were allowed at this time.
We hadn’t seen her in a month as her assisted living
was quarantined. I last left a bag with cat food, toilet paper, cookies
and a greeting card saying we missed her and hoped we could visit soon.
Her telephoned thank you was our final exchange,
I recalled it to remember if we ended with I love yous (we had).
Let me count the ways my mother-in-law lit up.
When we ate Oreo’s or sliced cheese and crackers
while I listened to stories about her childhood,
when her football team won and one of her caretakers
had a baby or got a new dog.
I work on my will thinking
of my mother-in-law’s packed assisted living apartment,
the figurines that became like family to her,
I dusted with feigned care as she became
bound to her wing backed chair.
The moon is a slice of apple and I am over Covid-19.
I watch my son, who worked so hard for four years in high school,
closely, does he look depressed?
No, he is listening to a class lecture, he reassures me.
A client tells me her usually magnanimous teenager punched his little sister.
Last night I dreamt my son became again a toddler and was swept away by a tidal wave.
I woke ashamed that in my dream I defended my parenting more than mourned.
A fugue is a composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.
A favorite therapist studies dreams.
She is Jungian which means everything is
symbolic and deliberate and archetypal.
She suggests we ask ourselves,
What is this dream asking of me?
I am listening to a podcast about a man
who lives in a polyamory community,
they ask what does this attraction mean or ask of me?
What does a virus that looks like a gum ball
dressing up as a piñata want from us?
The grief author David Kessler,
who wrote a book called Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief,
advises to make meaning in mere moments now,
anything else is too much to expect.
Corona is conspiracy? Biological warfare? Alien attack or activism?
Sentient being come to rebalance the planet?
Random dumb luck?
Devastation? Distillation? Unification?
What happens to the planet when humans pause?
Dolphins and swans reclaim Venice canals, turtles lay eggs
on Miami beaches where spring breakers once hoisted beer bongs,
goats roam the streets in Switzerland, the skies clear in Delhi, Milan and Beijing.
The bunnies are brazen in our neighborhood,
was one just talking to the neighbor’s cat?!
My music teacher and I connect by text during this time.
We don’t meet for lessons for a few months and I practice
sometimes more now, sometimes less now.
I watch a video of Jimmy Fallon and Miley Cyrus busking in disguises
in a New York subway. They remove their sunglasses and fake mustaches
to travelers who join in while filming on their smart phones.
I marvel at the bygone brazenness of the celebrities and the crowd,
so close and singing together!
My teacher offered the Malaqueña,
it is a Spanish flamenco with several sections.
A man plays a version of the song on YouTube,
his guitar strings ripple, they look loose,
like the garter snakes warming themselves on local paths,
the paths so familiar to me now.
There is a portion of the song that is slow and fugue-like,
my teacher says it is someone pining for love.
There are minor chords, the bass is held
while individual notes are allowed their lament,
slowly, as indicated by the term lento,
which originally means humid and soft.
It is my favorite part.
Pain and Poignancy is beautiful, bearable,
once the tempo and complexity again increases,
once we have resolution.
I can embrace this lento, this indulgence of longing,
because it exists within hope, hope for connection, for union.
It has been another month since I started writing
and states are beginning to enter phased openings.
We tentatively approach restaurants and beauty salons
the way we once did porn shops and liquor stores.
I walk still daily, noticing today
the pines are tipped with verdant new growth, french manicures.
Some of the rhododendrons are at my favorite phase,
there are still blossoms on the branches,
and a lacy tablecloth of petals in perfect circles at their base.