by Ellen McGrath Smith
I don't even know what to say anymore.
I'm thinking about starting a new language.
The most real thing that happened today
was using a roll of tape to get the dog's fur
off the shirt my daughter got me in Hawaii,
with my son-in-law, their honeymoon
nearly two months ago, having wed
on the last weekend we could have
in good conscience had the wedding
before the pandemic flared up again.
For four days, I've been lying in bed
getting work done—imagine, she
couldn't come, she was bedridden
with work! Finally, the frail body
acquiescing to the mind, & not just
my mind, the one in my brainpan,
but also, and possibly enveloping it,
a wider mind within which I must
find my way, forging the good
connections and eschewing
what my gut tells me to,
where "gut" and "mind"
are the same thing in different
places and proportions. I am fortunate
if these days of deep working rest are
the extent of my COVID experience.
The tape with the dog fur, though?
Why was this the realest thing I did?
I have been sick, and so not physically
acting on the physical world,
an expenditure of energy my body
has determined it cannot afford;
it is too busy with the virus.
And my conditions are such
that I can fall back into gravity
and let the body work this out
and mend. Thank you for that—
and anyone who takes that "you"
to mean them is the one I intend.
It's all of us touched by this virus,
thank you for the lot of resilience
you've left me. Is this a new language,
the virus speaking through me?
Now we're getting somewhere.
Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her poetry has appeared in The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Talking Writing, Los Angeles Review, and other journals and anthologies. Books include Scatter, Feed (Seven Kitchens 2014) and Nobody's Jackknife (West End Press 2015). Her chapbook Lie Low, Goaded Lamb was published in January 2023 by Seven Kitchens Press as part of its Keystone Series.