Pandemic Poems - APRIL 2020
Bio Note: I can't keep up with work deadlines but will answer
QuarantineChat.com calls, sew masks, and bake for community drop-offs, I lie awake much of the night plagued by unanswerable
questions. I am ever more grateful for poetry.
I was proud to list Verse-Virtual in the acknowledgements of my recent collection Blackbird as the first publisher of poems. On the strength of that collection I was named 2019 Ohio Poet of the Year.
I was proud to list Verse-Virtual in the acknowledgements of my recent collection Blackbird as the first publisher of poems. On the strength of that collection I was named 2019 Ohio Poet of the Year.
Baking A Few Dozen Loaves To Leave On Porches
I’m trying to septuple the recipe, but my calculations seem off
as I teeter on unavoidable numbers.
Cases will peak in 3 to 5 days, peak again
in 2 months or 4 or more. I know how much testing
hasn’t been done. Heard how many dead are expected
this week, next week, by the year’s end.
I can barely translate small egg volume into jumbo egg volume,
times 7. I want to count backward on some celestial abacus,
slide time’s beads left click click click back
to an alternate path occurring now in a multiverse
where I don’t leave food on lonely porches
instead multiply recipes for a jubilant occasion
in a house so crowded I can’t count everyone here.
Early Supper Again
I soak beans for soup, knead sourdough bread,
dust off and open last summer’s harvest in mason jars,
no different than any non-pandemic Thursday
except we eat earlier each day, appetites altered
by the approaching weight of default and disease.
Afterward we sit so close our skin pulses
with each other’s heartbeat as we wait
for this Twilight Zone episode to end.
You Don’t Know Me But I Miss You
Marc’s check-out clerk with three nose rings,
bitten nails, sardonic asides exchanged over lettuce.
Fellow walkers: dad with double stroller,
rainbow legging woman, earnest black hound hauling
graybeard man on a never-slack leash. Family around the corner
enacting a new playlet each morning before the bus arrives.
Librarian with a voice soft as my mother’s was back when I sobbed
myself weak, her hand stroking my hair while she looked out the window.
Wherever you are now, I wish you well. Cast light around you
each night before I sleep. I want your granny to pull through,
your job to stick around, your landlord to grant you every dispensation.
I want flowers to sprout in your garbage and old milk to turn into yogurt.
May every piece of junk mail transform into loans forgiven,
scholarships granted, old grievances forgotten. May your children’s
gifts become apparent to everyone. May we see each other soon,
smile in recognition, then transform this world into one where
each person’s highest hopes share the sunlight.
©2020 Laura Grace Weldon
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL