What Rough Beast | Covid-19 Edition | 05 21 20 | Marjorie Moorhead

Marjorie Moorhead
Two Poems

Coronavirus Diary III
3/20/2020

It’s not as though life is perfect
and everything is shining and smooth.

No, there’s a lot I’m unsatisfied with.
Many cluttered things, undone, in dust.

So why is there this precious feeling
like an ache in my heart

when the birds sing?
They sing, and fly together,

in the breeze
and the branches

and my heart cracks open
like the ice cliffs calving.

And the thought that life may end
is an unbearable thing.

Coronavirus Diary IV
3/23/2020

The odor of yeast bubbling
in warm honey sweetness

as my husband starts his bread.
It sits in a large ceramic bowl, covered

with damp thin cotton tea-towel,
waiting to get punched down

at the appropriate time.
Meanwhile, we do our qigong exercises

in front of the desk-top, as a white clad
practitioner we have stored in the cloud

does his slow moves with names tagging
crane, lion, bear. “Expand the chest

to cleanse the body.” Eagle spreads its wings
and bear swims across the water.

Our son, sequestered in a bedroom
of his childhood, has been robbed

of the experience, new for him last fall,
of being on a college campus, learning

about life, with his peers.
Instead, they must practice “social distancing,”

and attend “virtual leaning” classes
on Zoom.

—Submitted on 

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books, 2020). Recent poems have appeared in Verse-VirtualAmethyst Journal, and Sheila-Na-Gig, among other journals. Her poems have also appeared in several anthologies, including Planet in Peril (Fly on the Wall, 2019), edited by Isabelle Kenyon, and From The Ashes (Animal Heart, 2019), edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust. Moorhead practices tai chi, a daily walk, and poetry on the NH/VT border.

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.