My Covid life
By Marge Piercy
The first two months of Covid
I saw no one but Woody
and my four cats. Our vet
retired. Xena fell suddenly ill.
By the time I found a vet
accepting new patients, she
was dying. Depression
suffocated me in mud.
Tentatively as a doe venturing
out onto an open lawn without
cover, I began slowly to see
a couple of careful friends.
How I’d missed women.
Yet I saw my gay friend
first. He was used to taking
care. Then slowly I opened
myself to female friends,
Wednesday afternoons on
our sun porch, ten feet
apart, but talking, talking.
It helped so much as plague
took people into the ground.
As Trump broke the country
in two. As fires and hurricanes
thundered destruction. A friend
wrote, it’s always night now.
I’m still walled into my house
but it no longer feels eternal.
Hope creeps in like a mouse.
Copyright © 2021 by Marge Piercy.