Nancy Agabian's contribution to our Call for Poems on the topic of epidemics, illness, medicine, death and healing
Nancy Agabian of East Walpole, MA, USA has shared her original poem. APP thanks her.
Into the Needle
If the virus doesn't ever go away
or worse, worsens, what will I do?
I don't let my mind go there. I stay close
to the day, the hour, the minute,
the present, I sew a mask, stitch
by stitch, the prick of the needle,
a small dash of thread, one moment
into another, a thought leading
to the next--
Sometimes I let myself imagine a
new year, a new home, a new
line of work. Surroundings change
and I'm the same, my body superimposed
on a background like Colorforms,
a toy from childhood. The real magic:
the way two surfaces stick together
without glue, an object peeled and fixed
onto a picture, belonging, temporarily.
I know life's not this smooth,
like glass, like the surface of a still pond.
It's rough and ragged, jagged
as a mountain no one has ever
seen before. I must train to
scale this passage, but perhaps I am
building new muscles, however
slight: a shift of the eye, a snip of thread
cut square, a breath in, and out, of
care.
