The season that it was - Part One

Poems written then, about Then

Photo by Baptist Standaert on Unsplash

The remarkable poet

Margaret Ann Silver

has recently published (among other wonders) several poems that she wrote during, or about, the Covid shutdown. She’s made me brave, as good poems and good poets do; I’ve been sitting on some poems of my own about Those Days, wondering when to offer them, and now I will. Here are two to start with.

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MASKS


To share some safety in the breath
we offer our greatest good-will
in standing apart, in distance freely given
and touch withheld, along with so much more:

the truths unvoiced but written
by movements of our lips, the lines
sketched round them by our questions, needs,
our laughter -– reams of truth now bound
behind closed covers blank and smooth. 

Even dogs, who know the world by nose,
watch too, watch us especially, seem bewildered now
when teeth and tongue and half the breath
are missing from each face.

At the park today I slowed down when I saw
a woman pause, finding herself observed
by someone’s shaggy maybe-shepherd mix, 
head cocked, tail straight and stiff, alive with stillness, 

until she hooked a finger in her mask and pulled it down,
gave him her whole face, just long enough to send him
bounding to her side to sniff her fingers,
then sidle round her legs to where he had no need to see
the mask pulled up again, while with her other hand
she scratched that one best spot at the base of his tail.

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THE BACK OF THE BUDDHA


This is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha
in the window of a house
on a quiet city street
in a season of plague and suffering.

This is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha,
because the Buddha is not seen through the window
of a house on a plague-quiet street
in a season (when is it not) of suffering.

This is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha
in a window, pure and upright 
in white porcelain, however serene the glaze,
however quiet the season. 

This is perhaps a poem
about the grain in the wood of the table
where the Buddha sits, back to the window,
glazed in quiet, pure as porcelain, 
in a house in a city of plague.

This is perhaps a poem
about the heart-shaped leaves of the plant 
in the white pot beside the Buddha, 
or the quiet folds of white curtains
at the window in a house of suffering,
but

this is not a poem
about seeing the back of the Buddha,
because the Buddha, even seen, is not seen;
only present perhaps, perhaps in this window
in this house, in this suffering city,
in this moment of quiet, in the season that it is.

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[You can listen to an audio version of the poems using the little widget above the photograph.]

I wrote both of these poems in 2020, in the time During. I think it shows. I was retired, in decent health, living alone, able to get what I needed for life and comfort; I was as safe as anybody could be in those days. On top of that I was (am) an introvert, so the sudden shift away from in-person gatherings didn’t affect me as harshly as it did my extrovert friends. I took a walk in my neighborhood most days, smiled at the people walking on the other side of the street, ducked in and out of the little shops that were still open, and went back home to talk to my friends and family on email and Zoom. I did a lot of doom-scrolling. I did not presume, knowing what others were going through, to say that I was in distress — even though I was, even though we all were.

These poems, written during those days, have some of that vibe: “Tell me you feel like the world is ending without telling me you feel like the world is ending.” One of them plays over and over with the phrase “a season of plague and suffering,” but it doesn’t describe suffering or plague; it describes an image of peace. The other refers to sharing “some safety in the breath” and to “touch withheld, along with so much more,” and then turns into a story about someone patting a dog. These are poems that brush up against the pain and fear and weirdness of that time while still trying to stay connected to … well, to the here-and-nowness of dogs, bless them, and to the glimpses of other peoples’ lives that we get sometimes through open windows. To anything normal and recognizable and daily.

Whatever these two poems are, they’re not blunt. I wrote a poem on the same topic earlier this year that’s a lot more direct — because now, four years on from the worst of it all, I can. I’ll show you that one next week, and I’m grateful (again) to Margaret Ann for the inspiration to speak up on this subject. I don’t want to get stuck in the pain and fear and weirdness of that time, but I also don’t want to rush away from it before we understand how it’s changed us. Because it has.