I've been thinking about the pandemic lately, trying to remember what it was like to live through it, to teach through it, when in an old notebook I found a part of a poem. I worked on it a bit. Here it is below.
And how similar that time of anxiety and destruction to now, I thought, but also a time where the present might, momentarily, remind the future to stay in its place.
Mono no aware
this one arrives almost always in the company
of others,
squeaks through the cracks
and widens them
like ice
like when we gathered for the winter solstice
around the glowing fire
under the weight
of another wave of pandemic death.
the milky way
poured across the sky.
warm bowls of slow-cooked beans
held in gloved hands.
a joke told.
our eyes closed.
heads tilted.
puffs of laughter
ascending
into the darkness.