My dog is napping While I'm reading Paperbacks of poem craft. I catch myself breathing A line, out loud and low . . . "Trochee anapest, iamb, dactyl" My dog snaps awake, with his head Flopped to the side, eyes wide, wondering What wild spirit possesses me.
The body breaks my modern mind⎯
so used to soaring through stories, abstractly
forgetful of this flesh, this anchor⎯
it weakens, and hails down to holy earth,
What some would name, a soul.
What I will name, my soul.
My brittle bones belch,
"Return! Return! Re-
turn from weary wanderings
Now! Fill this sacred sense-bag
of twitching nerve and aching meat.
"Prepare a place
for empathy to root
and bloom. Sorely needed now
in a world awoken, unhappily
from dreams of immortality."
Her eyes told truth She could not speak. "I . . . Wish your flu test Was positive." She sighed to me, Behind her mask.
Yesterday I went in to get tested for COVID-19 and Flu. My flu tests were negative and West Michigan has no general population tests available. The doctor told me only the acute, severe patients who are believed to have it get their samples sent away for testing.
I was told to self-quarantine.
More time to read and write poetry, I suppose.
I am trying hard to get tested. A report was released this morning that two restaurants near my work have been classified as contamination zones. I feel, well, I am extremely fatigued. I have a dry cough. A low grade fever. And muscle pain throughout my body like you wouldn’t believe. I have been self-quarantining since I felt my throat get sore at 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon. I wear a mask at home to reduce how many new viral droplets I release into the air, although my wife and son are already probably exposed.
Please wash your hands and be kind to one another.
More poems coming soon.
Whither Shall I Go? 