I am not prepared
for shelter in place
only apples and lemon and chard
also emergency (rare)
in my fridge
my faulty IP address
keeps itching and is
incurable not unlike
a fitful neuralgia
I walk as if fleet
determination can ease
my restlessness
tiny cedar waxwings
flit through slender branches
crowd together feast on berries
call a sighing note
then grip the tree bark hang upside down all lightness
and gleam early spring light thins over the lake
double face daffodils hatch-out beneath
here not even two months ago
a student drowned herself
body and sound of her latticed in ice unburdened
now a swan sleeps in that place
neck curved into shelter against the light
I am moved by its quiet
little soul she has a sturdy form
soaked as she is with sun and mud
and feathered elegance
I fail to imagine
how we will fare
we fast from eucharist
this is my body given a severe electronic modesty
a Lenten union under the great trees
tiny blue flowers Veronica persica, bloom
I stretch my brain, accommodate
myself to forms of
migration not of people moving
from place to place
but of the loneliness of the young
poet who struggles to make
a pure privacy within
her errancy and augury
the goods she needs to hoard at home so that
she can risk the perfect word
in her strange unquiet enclosure.
I think mud season is a necessity
our new order to shelter
in place a notebook an allegory about the nature
of matter a toxic writhe of stuff that
surges and blots our capacity to breathe
we want for air and sinew of sterner quality—
we keep watch for pathogens
ready to deliver their slender luggage
even the squirrels are cleaning house
dropping wintry sludge and bits
of old, dried apple husks and rotten chestnuts
into April grass
nothing to do but wait—
I mark words thoroughly wash sheets
with care studiously sift flour and butter
tread after-words practice singing
lamentation for Tenebrae scour the soup pots
At night I turn darkness over peruse the hauntings
of the prophets their thoughts are
forms of cinder we wait for Easter light
for stillness
quietly
enough is enough
