Photo by Elina Emurlaeva and Unsplash
Becalmed
My life is a ship anchored at the pier of the pandemic –
marooned for weeks, months, a year now.
Late nights and lazy mornings,
reading, doing crosswords, walking with my partner,
eyes, ears, nose attuned to sharp,
smoke-scented winter air,
a wafer of moon dissolving in blue, clouds rippling
like sand on a tide-swept beach,
afternoon shadows
weaving a tartan blanket of black branch and wire,
white snow. Now a ringing chorus of peepers,
the call of a cardinal,
a squirrel’s chik-chik-chik, a lonely length of snow
slumping like a slain dragon along the road.
Grass, winter-bleached, rising
in sodden hillocks from sheets of pale, papery leaves
pressed in the earth. And finally, the text arrives –
Time to schedule your Covid-19 vaccine –
breathing hope and possibility into this quiet life, this
writing life, this fellowship of poets, friends,
family in the ether. I must weigh
my cargo carefully before I cast off into the world,
remembering this calm – sailing light and trim,
venturing only as far as I want to go.
The Author
Cora McCann Liderbach is a poet living in Lakewood, Ohio. Her work has appeared in The Broadkill Review, District Lit journal and Sad Girls Club, in staged readings for the Cleveland Humanities Festival, and on Literary Cleveland’s blog. She was a finalist in Gordon Square Review’s 2022 Contest for Ohio Writers and appears in Crab Creek Review’s Fall 2022 issue.
