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“Hmm…” was the clue for 6-Across in a recent L.A. Times Sunday crossword puzzle. 6-Across had seven squares, so I filled in “IWONDER.” Which sent me down a rabbit hole of several things I’ve been wondering about lately, in this time of pandemic and quarantine.

I wonder if the companies that make the brass fittings for coffins are now considered “essential businesses.”

Will face masks become the next fashion accessory? And how will deaf people “hear” if they can’t lip-read?

Have I ever before felt such waves of gratitude for the checkout clerks, the local organic farmers, the team that collects my trash at 6:30 every Wednesday morning? Do I promise now never to forget how much I love them?

Are the underwater creatures in the Pacific Ocean aware of the human chaos on the land? Would they like to help us if they could?

I wonder if Zoom will replace all committee meetings, blind dates, and family reunions from now on?

Are the hummingbirds that peer in the kitchen window impressed by how carefully we’re sanitizing our surfaces and our foods?

How many of the dozens of breathtaking daily headlines will end up being just statistical footnotes by next year?

I wonder about journalists’ duty as historians – and I’m thinking about true journalism vs social media. Journalists have a duty to discover and collect the details, to fact check and record the news accurately and clearly. But I wonder: does that professional duty extend to actually publishing and airing all those details, especially every incendiary, ill-advised political rant or armed-mob chant?

I think often about medical triage, about the painful ethical decisions coming in such overwhelming numbers for healthcare workers that each choice can’t possibly be given the thoughtful consideration it needs. Will these decisions haunt medical staff for the rest of their lives? How long a life are our front-line caregivers likely to have, given their repeated exposure to the menace of coronavirus?

And how is it possible that spring is happening despite the headlines? How can it be joyfully bursting forth from the soil of the tulip fields in the Skagit Valley, from the tips of maple branches, from the nests of finches, from window boxes and roadside ditches – how can that possibly be?

So these days I occupy my brain with these little wonderings, because my mind just can’t comprehend the huge reality of this new worldwide plague, and of a madman presiding over 55,000 Americans dead of Covid-19 in the past three months.

By the way, the correct answer to the “Hmm…” crossword puzzle clue was “LETSSEE.” Let’s see, indeed, what the rest of 2020 holds for us.

I wonder . . .

May you be well through all of this trying year.

 

 

“Statues” was a game we kids played during recess on the playground. One kid (usually a girl, a bossy “Lucy” type) got to control the action; the rest of us would dance and whirl and act crazy until she shouted “Freeze!” and we’d all stop in mid-action. Whoever wobbled first from their “statue” pose was out of the game. Of course some of the poses were so ridiculous that most of us would start giggling and jiggling and eventually we’d all just fall on the ground laughing.

Several decades later, in the midst of our whirling ordinary lives and crazy business-as-usual, a pandemic has shouted “freeze!” and we have                          

stopped.

We have sheltered-in-place; hidden in fear; closed our businesses, schools, places of worship.
We’ve lost our footing, lost our income, been bewildered, been disinformed.
We’ve cooked from our freezers and pantries, checked on neighbors, sent “I love you” emails.
We’ve gotten sick. We’ve died.

There have been lots of words about this in the ether of the internet – wise words, beautiful words, panicked words, informed words. Too many words.

I don’t want to add many more words to the ever-growing pile. What I do want to do is something I seldom do in this blog: offer you two of my newest poems. One was written “before,” in the first week of January (“Loving Mother Anyway”), and the other was written last week (“Obeisance to Mt. Baker”). They pretty much contain everything I have to say about the pandemic . . . so far.

May you be well.

 

Loving Mother Anyway

Joyfully immersed in her creative project,
she coddled, nourished, patiently evolved us
from single-cell simplicity
to complicated sentience.

Now we believe
we are the apex of her creativity,
the very reason she exists.
We crow our brilliance to her heavens
as we scar her skies with contrails
and chlorofluorocarbon.
We lacerate her skin
then salve her wounds
with trash and poisons.
We suck her riches dry
and kill each other
when we feel deprived.

Tired, she whispers now.
I grow so tired of them.
I feel no joy in keeping them.
Soon, she says,
very soon I’ll shake these parasites
from my exhausted body.
I’ll loose them from my gravity
with whirling, angry storms.
They will fall up
through holes ripped in my shawl.
They’ll vaporize in empty darkness,
and I will not take them back.

Anxiously I watch
her growing discontent.
I wonder: could I love her well enough
to make her change her plans?
Our science says too late for that.
But do I cherish the bounty
and the beauty of her life enough
to love her anyway,
as she destroys humanity
so she can heal herself?
                                  ©2020 CynthiaTrenshaw.com

 

Obeisance to Mt. Baker

Green-fringed fir shawls
flail in gusts nor’westerly.
A dozen gulls and two great eagles
sail between gray waves, pale sky.
Digital 1s and 0s swarming
everywhere, invisible,
mutate into small-screen warnings:
disorder!
death!
pandemic!

I’m bewildered in this swirl.
My jaw is clenched,
my fingers too.
I can’t find meaning,
cannot focus.

But tall above the Cascade Range,
stolid when all else is trembling,
brilliant white Mt. Baker stands,
commands attention.
The peak will not,
cannot be ignored.

I meet the mountain’s ancient stare,
hear its silent hallowing demands.
My breathing slows.
Wind and code falter in the ether.
Turmoil is becalmed.

Reverently I press my palms together,
peak my fingers, mirroring
the mountain.
Accept its deep initiation.
Embed its calm into my heart
where chaos cannot reach.
                                  ©2020 CynthiaTrenshaw.com

photo by Corrine Bayley

 “I used to think bearing witness was a passive act, but I don’t believe that anymore. When we are present, when we do not divert our gaze, something is revealed. The very marrow of life. We change. A transformation occurs. A consciousness shift.”  Terry Tempest Williams, quoted on ServiceSpace.org