Cover and interior art by Wendy Vardaman
wendyvardaman.com

Sheltering with Poems: Community &Connection During Covid
Bruce Dethlefsen, Kathleen Serley and Angela Voras-Hills, eds.
With a foreword by Max Garland.
ISBN: 978-1-7327057-2-2
122 pp. $15
Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets & Bent Paddle Press, 2021

Click the arrows to scroll through the anthology’s Table of Contents. Scroll down for a small selection of poems from the book.

What falls away is always. And is near.

—From Theodore Roethke’s “Waking.”

Last night, when I couldn’t sleep,
I imagined it was snowing,

the fat flakes falling softly on the rooftop
outside my bedroom window,

filling the streets as if cloth sacks
of feathers had been emptied

above our heads. It was silent,
and so I imagined the black air

filling with light. I imagined the limbs
of trees outlined in snow—

magnificent, outstretched arms.
And the edges of things softening

so no one could be sure what
disappeared, what appeared.

This morning, though, the ground
is bare. People are walking

in ones and twos, carefully
crossing the street or staying

six feet apart, as instructed.
The shoots are pushing

through the good dirt
of the earth, though nothing

looks familiar anymore,
as under a snowfall,

though different,
as if we had been sleeping

after all.

Hope Is a Force of Nature

One minute you’re sitting
on a porch enjoying the view
and then bam! Hope turns
yellow sun to bruise

blue sky inside out
porch swing to kindling
and you into your neighbor’s
arbor vitae, ass over teakettle.

Hope lives to tear you down
to basement to lift you back up.
Hope yearns to rip through
your heart from aorta to atrium

and out without a blink. Hope
can jump-start a frenzy not
like car battery and cables
like lightning and rod.

One mile wide Hope feeds
on your debris when all she
wants is to be a zephyr all
she needs is for you to listen.

The Locks

In this spell of time
With loose beginnings
And no apparent closure,
In this spell of wait
And careful treading,
I let you cut my hair.
O, strangest task of union.
Charmed with these locks,
You hold the scissors
With such assurance.
And for my part
I feel no reticence,
No, not behind the ears,
No curse, no damn you
For this scalping,
No, “Restore the Lock,”
No invocation to Juno, Aphrodite.
Just do as you please
In this cruel confinement,
This spell of time.

Sheltering

This is the hour when the sun comes back.
This is the hour the sun. This hour
this sun. This hour is this sun.
Open the shades. Open the window.
Let us see this hour this sun. When
this sun is here where are the people?
Where are the people you know the people
you love the neighbors
the strangers? Inside. Somewhere.
You know where you are. You are not
going anywhere except bed sofa kitchen.
Soon you will take a shower. Now
across the street behind
that empty office building—
flame fire sun

& birds.

These Days I Want Butter

This is no time for dry toast
the naked baked potato
or bowl of skinny oatmeal.
I want tiny rivulets
to fill the nooks and crannies
of my Thomas’ English muffin.
I want the slick of salt and sweet
to give shine, give gleam
to the bite of life as it is now, to pool
around kernels of sweet corn
the crunch and pop of each languorous
bite a respite.
I want to lick my lips slowly
coat my tongue before swallowing.
I don’t want the whole stick,
not even the fat pat—what drips off
is wasted, goes overboard
only to stain the tablecloth.
But let’s be clear: I need enough,
enough to yellow this moment
to golden a pause,
tenderize this sticky dough
of anxiety and uncertainty.
I mean, this morning I added dabs
to my pancakes and watched
as their hue deepened with the loss
of their grip on solidity. While maple syrup
swirled the slick on my plate
the radio’s news slipped down
more easily than yesterday.
Blessed be the butter.