This poem was written deep in Pandemic winter, in response to a simple prompt: to remember a pre-pandemic pleasure: The joy of riding a bike, to a cozy office with a trusted storykeeper.
This piece was in Jackson Hole Poetry Box, February, 2021. As we slowly emerge from pandemic, it’s beautiful to consider the layers of before, during, and emerging in remembering this piece. The physical poetry box, housed at JH Center for the Arts, was at minimal capacity during pandemic, so the curator asked for electronic or video submissions, in addition to a poem that could be printed on real live paper and dropped in the poetry box, waiting openly for passersby to gobbled them up. This request coincided with the first heaviest snowfall of winter, so I concocted this video under these perfect circumstances.
Everything from that time feels like quiet murmurs of the world before and the emerging world. In many ways, I wish we could take some pieces of pandemic life with us into this new landscape: the silence of closed shops and zero social pressures– and all the sensory richness that came with it. But, I’m also stoked to open this box of post-pandemic life.
You can read the poem <a href="http://<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FJHPoetryBox%2Fposts%2F249955443307049&show_text=true&width=500" width="500" height="610" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share">here, too.
MoonLit Fern 