Yesterday felt like a first step back into normality for me, at least insofar as doing productive work. I edited most of a chapter, finished judging a poetry contest, and spent an hour on the phone with my friend Teresa, conning over various translations of Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo." Teresa and I used to have a telephone-talk about poems once a month, but now we're tightening our schedule to every two weeks. We're both craving more intensity, not just for the sake of the poems we're studying together but for the sake of our own writing. Self-motivation is not something I've struggled with before. Since I first figured out I needed to be a poet, I've driven myself forward into my vocation. But this crisis has upended me: my worry spirals into anxious household management, and I need to find some way to rediscover my private voice.

This morning's aid: yoga at 9 a.m.. Last night my yoga teacher sent me a note saying that she is starting regular Tuesday-Thursday classes via Zoom. I have to say I hate the way life is shifting to video. But apparently that is going to be the only way to do lots of things for a long time, so I am trying to adjust. Tom has even figured out a small studio-ish arrangement for me so that I can take part without seizing up in horror at how terrible I look. That's the big problem: video triggers my vanity in the worst possible way. There's no way to avoid the fact that I'm 55 years old and look like it. When I can't see myself, then I don't care. When I can, all I can focus on is ugliness. 

Apparently this post is exuding stress. I apologize for that. What calm can I share instead? How about:

I looked out the window yesterday and saw a turkey in my back yard. I have never seen a turkey in Portland before. It was large and perplexed and seemed to enjoy pecking up something or other along our fence line.

Cafe Quarantine served split-pea soup last night, which is a most delightful comfort on a rainy evening. (Side dishes: toasted leftover cornbread, raw beet slaw.) Tonight: penne with shrimp, grapefruit salad.

My son is a trash-talking Scrabble player who loves to trounce me. The flip version of this: I raised a good speller who knows a lot of words. Success!

Tom and I have always been solid partners in bad times. He is the prince of my heart. I am grateful for his patience, his kindness, his wit, his resourcefulness, his stamina, in every hour of every day. 

Here's a poem from Chestnut Ridge, a small paean to everyone who manages to keep loving one another in these dark hours.

Saturday Night in Connellsville

Dawn Potter

Because, across a crowded table,

the man you have loved for twenty-five years

catches your eye and breaks into a smile

so bright it could light up the Yukon;

because, as you smile back through the candle flame,

your lanky fifteen-year-old leans all his wiry,

vibrating weight against your shoulder,

and your chair shudders and your neighbors laugh;

because when you put your arms around your boy

and press your cheek into his bristly hair,

he reaches for your hand and holds it against his own cheek

and doesn’t let you go;

because the man on the tiny stage dances

over the guitar strings as if his fat hands

are as fragile as the snowflakes

that sift slowly from the unseen sky; 

because the crowd breathes alongside you

in easy patience, in careful, quiet joy;

because even time has paused

to shift its flanks and listen,

you say to yourself:

I will remember this.

I will remember this forever. 

[from Chestnut Ridge (Deerbrook Editions, 2019)]