Where have you found refuge during pandemic times? Audrey Gay Rodgers writes about her farm and her cows.

My refuge during COVID…

…has been in the barn; here at my farm spring has indeed sprung! Grass is growing. Cows and grazing and feeding and twice a day milking give my days a ‘normal’ feel.

Normalcy in daily routines

Normalcy in the comforting sounds of the pulsation of milkers, of calves suckling their bottles

Normalcy in the spring grassy smell of manure

Normalcy in the taste of spring milk

 

Oh, to be a cow…

 

Audrey Gay Rodgers, Hameau Farm, Belleville, PA

May 2, 2020

Annalise on a knoll at Hameau Farm

Annalise on a knoll at Hameau Farm

We gave our Mindful Writers a prompt of "Dear World" during a May mindful meeting. This is writer Maxine Marak's response.

Dear World,

 

You have finally been able to stop us. Stop our polluting, abusing and misusing your resources. But are we aware enough to be able to see the gift you have given us?  Stopping the pollution, stopping the raging consumerism, making us aware of the deep divides and inequities in our culture. Are we capable to use this stoppage as the gift it is? An opportunity to 'right the ship'. Can we/will we see beyond inconveniences, the deaths of loved ones, to see the rich gift that has been laid at our feet? A chance to have our environment heal, a chance to balance the income inequalities, the prejudices of us versus them. Can we finally see the value in those we never thought about who are now saving our lives - grocery workers, meat packers, healthcare workers, mail carriers, garbage collectors? Is this really an opportunity to finally truly see each and every one as a valuable contributor to our world? Will we learn and pay attention, deciding to take the necessary bold moves or will we once again selfishly squander this amazing opportunity?

 

Maxine E. Marak

State College, PA

May 4, 2020

Lines from writer Becky Wagner who often writes with us when her babies are napping.

The sound of electronic ocean plays in my ear.
A ping from the heat.
A rumbling from a car engine outside as it drives by.
Indistinct chatter from my daughter in the other room as she talks to a friend on the computer. 

Calm energy.
Frenetic energy.
Ebb and flow.
This is how we go.

How does time morph and shift depending on the time of day?
It moves so fast in moments of solitude and slows to molasses when trying to fill what feels like endless hours of entertainment for two kids stuck in a house.

It’s really all good.
Please stay asleep.
Breathe in, breathe out.
This is the rhythm.

The birds are back chirping outside my window.
The daughter is still talking.
Quiet revelry.
Boisterous connection.

Musings of a nap time moment.

May 19, 2020

3 Pandemic Poems from poet Michele Mekel

Time’s Naiveté

In the photo,

my year-younger self,

innocence latent,

discovered too late.

 

That year-ago lifetime, 

in a world before Covid,

so alien now 

in this realm rife with death.

Counting Tomorrows

How many

of these tomorrows

must we endure

before the clock

turn backs to 

a semblance of

yesterday?

  

Urban Apparition

I am like a ghost, 

wandering the city and

haunting long-dead pasts.

May 27, 2020

From poet Nicole Miyashiro in response to "...with the confetti of aftermath,/the leaves come..." from Ada Limón's poem "Instructions on not Giving Up"

What falls and keeps falling is underfoot as the steps are taken. Such careful steps. Such silence, the leaf crashes under sole. There is no one about, except: that impossibly tender stranger in the distance, moving towards you and you towards them and it takes that unexpected strength not to impulsively rush them for an inappropriate embrace. An irresponsible embrace. An embrace with an aftermath of numbers – dots blooming outwards on a chart of the infected. An aftermath of confetti.

May 25, 2020

Welcome!

In these unprecedented and unsure times, we hope to offer a curation of writings from the community. While we practice sheltering in place, we hope you might also take some shelter in reading these stories, poems and ramblings. All are welcome to submit a little something. Send entries to writereflectshine@gmail.com.

Here’s a few prompts (if you’d like) to get you started:

Where are you finding and/or creating beauty?

Describe your idea of a “new normal” for yourself or for the world.

Take us into a powerful/ humorous/ simple/ sad/ joyful/ contemplative moment from the last weeks.