I’ve been writing,
reflecting in my journal
and thinking just what you asked:
Why does this
feel different from the
already self
isolated state we live in?
The closest I’ve come to it is a
feeling that’s like those
wire-framed screen covers
people put on food in the summer to
keep the flies off.
They also keep out some light.
That’s how I feel.
One of those is over everything
not suffocating but
dimming, creating a feeling
not of safety but of
enclosure.
The universe has a peculiar reaction to our sincere desires.
— Mary Ruefle, “Someone Reading a Book”
Sincere desire: to call
today the worst birthday
but I don’t care.
The cat is all now you know
how it feels. House finches
swing on the feeder,
chuffed to see me
behind glass. My sincere desire
is to record a teaching video.
I am pale but I explain
the field of cultural production
to an empty room:
could be a metaphor but
I’m guessing not.
Doubt is my peculiar
stir crazy. On my last walk by
the creek, a woman bolted
when she saw me
fifty metres off, startled
like she was a deer and
I a hunter or a virus.
Just me in the woods
looking for rushing water
to listen to this week when
the Big Strange merged with
the Big Lonely: everybody’s
all-time ailment.
The cat is never sincere
but she flings one back
foot over the keyboard. Stay.
After Nora Ephron’s “What I’ll miss, what I won’t miss”
What I Don’t Miss
Traffic
Chauvinism
Mall noise
Parking meters
Public restrooms
Small talk
What I Do Miss
Sparring
New book smell
Textures
Specialty tea stores
The family cat
Hugs
Small the changes we made
to the yard from last
spring to this. Shrubs
mainly, a path, a deck.
But we must have changed
the northwest passage
around the house for today
the strong wind, soothing
as it was for a time
in its familiarity as I sat
with the horror of news,
ultimately crushed the curve
taken by a flock of American
tree sparrows against my window.
One after one they fell. I rose,
made myself look at each one,
the whole works. Dead dead dead
dying dead. Look what I’ve done.
(Original link with readers’ comments here.)
One is my mother. Her smile a Siamese cat’s —
her ears sharp and tail proud as she blinks a wise-eyed stare.
One is a dead poet I love. His appearance wakes me
inside the dream I’m dreaming. I panic that he has died,
but in my sleep, he lives again.
Who is here and who has gone?
The abandoned shells of crabs are numinous
and litter the beach.
The smallest cormorant dreams
the soft salty flesh of crab. The beach sends ominous signs to my waking self.
One is a friend who died at sixteen, our lives briefly linked.
I walk though these dreams. Are they my own?
In a mask I walk. In a hand-sewn burgundy mask.
People who have died catch this terrible cough.
Die again.
I wake
to the waking world,
the dog on me breathes his shuddering sigh,
while the dog of my dreams
quietly
watches me.
