As I join my friends–poets, church members, yogis, book lovers–in our mutual state of awareness about the imminent threat of the COVID-19 virus, I find that my perspective about life is changing. Despite the bombardment by news media of updates, I am grateful. Grateful for friends from past and present life, for family, those who have passed and those still with us. I am grateful for the rich literary life I’ve been afforded by my decades of work as a professor and by the friends who have share the literary life with me.

One such group called itself “Carpe Diem” after the secret society portrayed in the film Dead Poets Society. Literally translated as “seize the day,” the theme represents how the film’s Professor John Keating urged his students to live, by seizing the beauty and fullness of every day instead of living by standards defined by others. Our reading group lasted for more than two decades, and though we haven’t met in a few years, the reading and discussion we shared has stayed with me in this “time of epidemic.” One book in particular haunts me today. Blindness, by Jose Saramago, portrays a sudden epidemic of blindness which afflicts many in an unnamed city. The victims are quarantined (a potent word these days) in an asylum and forced to establish new realities in their lives. Though their sight is restored as mysteriously as it was taken from them, their lives will never be the same.

For now, for today, I celebrate what is before me. I celebrate the ones who have been there for me and others through times of beauty, sickness, and loss. I celebrate my marriage of twenty-three years to Roger and all he has brought to my life. Thank you, Roger, for your ways.

My Husband is a Liberal at Heart

He hides his politics in silence.
He’s an engineer, and after all, engineers
are supposed to be
rational
left-brained
balanced
organized.

How can such a person be a liberal?

He drives a big truck and plays golf for
sport. He does all the cooking, and he
will care for a pet as if it were his child.
When we put down our cat Butterscotch,
he cried alongside me, remembering how
she came down into his basement workroom
to keep him company while he chiseled and
ground away at metal and wood.

He thinks of others’ feelings, finding a way
to soothe a friend’s pain, or to call me on
my cell phone after a minor argument to
tell me he loves me whatever happens.

He nurtured my aging mother when I
was at work. Took her for rides in her
wheelchair on the short path around her
nursing home, gathering leaves in the
fall, or hearing her say, This is the forest
primeval about all the green growth
around her. She asked every single time,
Where is that from? Though he didn’t
remember Longfellow’s Evangeline (he’s
an engineer after all), he behaved
as if it was a new question, discussing the
possibilities of authorship.

He painted my mother’s fingernails,
asking her if she wanted summer pink,
or a fall deep orange/red, like the leaves they
gathered. I can see him now, sitting with his
large body bent over her bed tray,
working with her splitting nails, cleaning
the fungus under each one,
filing, cutting, painting, until Bee was the
envy of the nursing home. Her son even
paints her nails, they said.

After she died, I promised never to forget
these things, especially the fingernails, or
his gentleness, sitting with her to listen
to The Great Gatsby on audio, or bringing
poetry with music tapes to her room to
play and listen.

My husband is at heart a liberal. In his
silence, he played for my mother her music
at her deathbed. In his quiet he checked
her pulse, put his large, rough hands
before her face and nodded.

Portals: A Memoir in Verse, poetry, from Kelsay Books
Searching for Nannie B:  Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women. Ardent Writers Press
My Heart Wears No Colors, poetry, from FutureCycle Press