Meditation 35

9 April 2020

Poems of Hope and Resilience. Some of us now “have” time; others are “running out.” She notes a bias against stasis in coronavirus reporting. All the sad stories are of people leaving their houses, not of those trapped inside. The virus is a mountain that walks, that knows where the key spot is, that enters through a crack in the floor, a bloodshot eye, a nostril. Feel your breath, first in one and then the other channel of the nose. Follow it down to your throat, your pelvic bone, your knees and ankles. It’s back to small kid time, this naming of our parts.

The title presumes that poetry is a verb. A deliverable. Comes of a supply chain, diverted to the private sector, the one that owns the leisure to read. Those who are free to wear masks, do. Black men get kicked out of Walmart for wearing them; at least they get out alive. The mask distances us, but distance can be frightful. I cannot read faces, though I have time to shop for my essential goods. Essence = gasoline.

As your teacher, I offer you deliverables via the internet. I calibrate the tone of my links. Hope and resilience good; post from CUNY professor not so good; meme by Stephen Colbert a hoot. Now there’s a thesis, an antithesis, and a semi-synthesis for you. The father, son and holy ghost, all accessible through wireless, if you’ve got it. The national correspondent speaks from her living room: thick curtains, a fireplace, tasteful art. We cut to her husband in the finished basement. He has the virus. It causes terrible pain in the night, so he takes Tylenol. She’s about to break into tears. So this is privilege, this ability to stay separate, to bleach the kitchen and set up the kids with their toys, to work from home by talking about yourself. Meanwhile, grocery store workers are dying. This is not a discrepancy I want to pursue right now. Maybe in the next election, if there is one.

The tourist economy is parasitic. Without a body on which to feed, hotels are left not to the homeless but to the open air. Police guard the entrances to Kailua Beach Park. You can walk on the beach, but not sit. Do not let your breath remain static or it might dispense its viral load. Something about the tone of John Prine’s songs is appropriate to this. The hole in daddy’s arm into which the money goes is wit. The vendor in Baltimore said the renovated building in right field was where his daddy collected unemployment checks. That was during a rain delay.

They also serve whose delay is amorous. The light on the palm, mitigated by shadow lines. I hear voices beyond the range of droplets. My social media an invaded host. We used to call the meme viral. Some words translate better than others. “Given” all the time in the world, she can’t write. This, she writes, is normal.