In answer to the most repeated question nowadays concerning the world's return to normal, Thoreau might have said what he did say: Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it shorter. Schools that reopen send students back home when contagion spikes again. When the sun shines between days of rain, public beaches and patio dining beckon. Five weeks ago, the man who cuts the grass in our neighborhood asked if we knew anyone who'd come down with the virus or died from it. This weekend, he said his wife will only buy groceries online now. It's hard to visit friends or even family. You stand on the porch steps, then venture into the foyer. Soon you're on the couch with a glass of something fizzy in hand. We'll buy stamps and cards to send to others far away. Someone says If we die, we'll die together. Cicero mused, If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. Now the sun is setting and the river has never looked more lovely. Gold, indigo, and the distant punctuation of wading birds at its edges: black- crowned night heron, glossy ibis and common gull; egret always stirring up the muddy ink pot.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022). She is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.