I’m a social, organized, life-long learner. This has always served me well and particularly does so now.

For example, I belong to a Bridge Club. It’s a retirement plan to keep my brain active. The also allows my husband and me to interact with humans now that our work colleagues are out of our lives. Clearly, sitting at a card table touching the same equipment is not currently appropriate, yet I have not lost contact with this aspect of my life.

I’ve embraced playing bridge online. I’m not talking about the solitary game people play against three robots. I’m referring to real people, in real time. I can play bridge with strangers from around the world or, preferably, with friends whom I know and enjoy. We can continue our companionship even though we’re not in the same physical space. I learned the software quickly and just finished posting instructions, with screens shots, on our club’s Facebook site to help others. We’re all “seniors” and some find it difficult to adapt.

Continue Reading It’s My Privilege

Shut indoors in the middle of a pandemic / you would think it would be quiet / but my two young children are yelling over nothing/the phone is ringing with relatives / updates from the school board / conference calls I can’t bear to pay attention to/outside—a siren, then two / emails and voicemails with urgent missives / the manufactured hysteria surrounding both deadlines and tasks roars in my ears / I long to reply with … Really? Is this REALLY important? What’s going to happen if I don’t do this by 5pm? What? NOTHING. That’s what / but instead my keys plink in soothing staccato tones / I promise results

Continue Reading Standard Tuning for Social Isolation

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.

Continue Reading Enclosure

Little Covie (may I call you that?)
doing what you’ve done since
the beginning — begetting and begetting
in biblical proportion, as though
there were no tomorrow, surviving
as we wear you to the mall.

I call Aminah, a refugee, to ask has she all
urgent instructions in Arabic? “This virus
is everywhere, in every language!”
She is aghast that I don’t see
and rushes off to What’s App
Mom and Dad in Baghdad.

Continue Reading Come So Far

and in these times,
I focus on the birds, the chirps, the helicopter thrum of wings
the gossip high in the bare branches
trees waiting for pips to become a blush of early green
at dawn they branch like the lobes of lungs
and crocus tips sharp-tongued make faces through the leaden leaves

and in these times,
each day is brighter, the tint in the sky is turning a more assured blue
and the moon still sasses me early in the morning
“what a beauty I am!” and then fades into breakfast
Continue Reading in these times