Covid Summer Notes--Monday: July 20, 2020 (Kennelly)

The virus tests my belief that

I am never bored.

Travel cancelled, home since March, still

I am never bored.

Inside, I watch through windows as

summer’s second robin batch

gobbles bright Viburnum berries.

Outside, I prune black raspberry vines

sprouted uninvited

in the daylily bed. July’s crop is in. I discover

wasps between fruit and prickly thorns.

Their many-chambered nest lies

next to my scissors.

I decide to leave that chore

till first freeze.

Inside again, I write, I nap (why not?),

I wash the summer berries

who await their fate:

Raspberry and peach clafoutis, my Covid cooking discovery,

necessity born.

Who knew this French-inspired

dish might be supper if served sans sugar?

Chickpea flour, eggs, milk, all check diet boxes.

Dessert for supper? Mais oui.

After clafoutis, the bright-lit screen awaits.

In olden days (my childhood) my personal plastic portable

radio linked to fiction.

I listened as I watched sparrows

avoid shoebox traps I’d set outside my window.

I’d draw and dream.

But now, tonight, no live theater, concerts, recitals.

I miss them; I miss reviewing, writing about them.

But I am not bored.

I notice as I finish this note

that it’s actually 20, 2020. How cool is that?

I am easily amused.

I am never bored.

So far.

Laura Kennelly’s first collection of poetry was The Passage of Mrs. Jung (Norton Coker Press, 1990). Her work has also appeared in A Certain Attitude: Poems by Seven Texas Women (Pecan Grove Press, 1995), and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press, 2010). An Ohio resident since 1996, she’s also written for Cool Cleveland, Northern Ohio Live, and Scene.