LOVE IN THE TIME OF CORONA
Sheri-d Wilson was the City of Calgary’s poet laureate from April 2018 to April 2020.
Our faces have changed and we don’t know, what we look like yet, as we search for a new way to live and love
We oscillate between paralysis, monotony and flow, wonder if we will ever wake from this Covid coma, if we will ever know anything again, wonder if we will only be able to dream — of trips to far-off places, sitting in stands cheering, standing O’s for virtuoso’s, or dancing wild to Motown live on a Sunday afternoon
Time changed places with space and dissolved, along with the high paced rat race of our lives — postponed indefinitely, cancelled — later is the new now, re: zoom, push the reset button every time we make an expedition into the outside world, zone out, reel, try to keep it real too real to feel — it’s unreal —
To tell you the truth it took a pandemic for me to learn to bake a loaf of banana bread — yes I found Grandma Nian’s recipe, fashioned the facsimile of a loaf pan, the wrong shape, it turned out the right taste, each bite of banana bread reminded me of her, each bite brought me closer to her and the memory of sweeter occasions — a beautiful boon at a time when the only way to touch someone is in their heart, to be touched by tenderness heart to heart
There will always be another ski pass another hill, another slope, breath of fresh air, after the age of asphyxiation and despair is behind us — we wonder what will become a thing of the past?
Maybe we’ll become more human as the earth takes a moment to breathe, as the earth takes a moment to breathe, we wash our hands raw, wear homemade masks, try to learn the perfect distance that might save our own breath, and one day we might fill that empty space, with the beauty of a sunset, instead of a pending death, six feet above to avoid six feet below
One thing’s for certain,
I had no idea I touched myself so much hand to hair, sweeping it back fingers to face, nose, and lips, adjusting glasses, and the arid eclipse to remove sleep from my eyes —
Some days I just break down and cry grieving the life I once had, now gone along with hugs and kisses, shaking hands freedoms, and long good-byes
Or those nights when I wake with a little cough, a slight headache and I think I caught it somehow in isolation — that it’s the end, and I spend the rest of the night in a cold sweat in a deep tête-à-tête with death, that’s when my heart goes out to the people on the front lines, the ones taking care
On those days, and after those nights the only thing that comforts me is a potato — I know, it sounds trite but sometimes the only thing that will lift my spirit is scalloped potatoes, spuds
I think of my other Grandma, the poet who arrived here from Ireland with five cents and a dream of love in her pocket — when she went to spirit all her writing was lost, scattered to the earth, and all that was left was a locket, with a small strand of her hair
Today, I follow her dream and turn to the face of love — today, as I perform a wedding in this time of social distance, my voice breaks on the front lawn under the weeping willow, about to bloom in yellow catkins
My voice breaks with the blight of beauty at the love I see standing before me beneath long feathery branches over moonstone roots
A young couple ties the knot, handfasting at a distance they bind their own hands in the ancestral light, of fertility sighs in this time of pandemic, they speak the vows of their souls in a creation divination that humbles, that extols
My body holds back tears, as I wed them from afar, I am struck by the closeness of their hearts the first real day of spring
They are beaming global ghosts into dancing light it swirls around them, and the word corona returns to its original meaning aurora borealis, solar soma overhead, their light is likened to a crown,and I say to them, “you may kiss with joy”
Maybe we’ll become more human as the earth takes a moment to breathe, as the earth takes a moment to breathe, we wash our hands raw, wear homemade masks try to learn the perfect distance ...