New
Stay inside. Watch how life
starts in secret places. Blossoms lather
in sudsy layers on the bare,
rubbed-raw knuckles and fingers
of the cherry trees. The flycatcher
outside your window sings whit
or clip or whee. Do a tea ceremony
using a clay pot and cylindrical cups.
Savor each sip. Make squash soup
with ginger and be sure to eat it
warm. Feel how it slides into
your belly, dripping light
like the sun. Hear the robin bang
its head against your attic window
thinking its own reflection
is enemy or mate? Don’t
do that. Stop. Start with meta-
cognition: this is you.
Not the busyness. The doing.
But listening. Silence. Being.
First preen your feathers,
turning your head this
way and that, admiring
your own reflection. Then fly
into the yard of yourself
and bathe in the stone birdbath,
splashing rainbow drops of water.
Be like the heron: meditate
all day doing your quiet
thing. Or be like the wren: tidy
your home. Clean up messes,
remove layers of dust, and watch
how motes float in ballgowns
of light on the windowsills.
Move your furniture to different
corners, sliding it on rugs.
Create change, but also take into
your hands all things you own
and remember what each
means to your heart. Kiss
the objects your mother
or father used before you,
the curtains your grandmother
crocheted, the cabinets
your great-grandfather carved.
Take family dishes with gold trim
from your shelves and eat
from them instead of saving
them for special days. Read,
make lists of your favorite
words (testudinate, petrichor, phloem).
Write poems. Remember
being a child, how every little
moment was instantly holy: fetching
a shuttle cock from the top
of the shed, baking banana bread,
making a drawing for a sick friend.
Remember how much the small
things meant, like growing
sprouts on cotton balls on a chipped
porcelain plate, then eating them
on a cheese sandwich. Pull out
your binoculars. Watch
the Eastern Phoebe spread its tail
over the pond above the slightest waves.
Wake up like spring, like fish
underwater: natural, alone, unafraid.
Tell yourself a new and different
story. Glide for miles like the marsh hawk,
barely flapping your wings. Become
a poem. Laugh the chant of chimes
touched by the hands of the wind.
Then cut out some paper birds
and glue them to your see-through
windows for the next robin
who tries to fly into glass.
Listen to the Barred Owls softly
hooting the night back to light.
Published in Pandemic Puzzle Pieces: A Pandemic Poetry Anthology from Blue Light Press, edited and compiled by Diane Frank and Prartho Sereno, 2021