Shore Road

I’d like to bring you
down into this sparkling ditch,
bubbling with spring flow,
and a little red mud

I’d have you step on yielding,
combed-over gold brown grass
watch the hunting spiders scatter
hear sparrows skirting your perimeter
thrip, trill, kachee, come away-way-way
and crickets that hush

If you could angle back up
the uncertain banks
to the red dirt road, look across the fields
to the purple, sparkling bay water
and see a fence dip into creased hollows
and rise again past the alder wetland

Then the wind would lift with the tide
and you’d breathe in musky hope
and clams far away.

 

Ten Goods in my Life, Five Not

Good: I am healthy, get quality sleep and exercise, and feel energetic most of the time.

Not: I am being lazy about writing and other forms of creativity, watching too much TV instead.

Good: My sweetheart and I are still together after distance dating for a year and 4 months.

Not: My kitten Gary Sparkle has gone missing.

Good: My kitten Turtle has stayed home and has got over her extreme anxiety.

Not: I have a constant hissing in my ears and probably some hearing loss.

Good: I get to teach 1st-5th grade Exploring Nature classes; we go outside each class in all weathers, and they love it. I get to incorporate drawing, music, and poetry.

Not: I don’t get to visit my family in Canada yet because of the pandemic.

Good: My family members are all COVID free so far.

Not: I am again teaching new high school curriculum and have to put in a lot of extra hours to stay ahead, without feeling that I am rising to excellence yet as a teacher.

Good: My children are all local and I get to see them regularly, because they’re all in controlled bubbles and being careful about avoiding COVID infection.

Good: I have a freezer full of fruits, apple juice, and organic chicken, a pantry full of staples, and a garden full of brassicas.

Good: I have cut expenses by cancelling or cutting back on unnecessary perks.

Good: Two of my kids have jobs and two have government support.

Good: My basement is no longer a swamp, and instead I have a pond and a rain garden in process.

 

I don’t really get this

It’s back to the school building for our middle and high school students Monday, and we’ve been gearing up. The classroom are set up with individual desks spaced six feet apart, the entrance protocols, PPE, health attestation forms and digital thermometers ready. The elementary kids have been on campus for two weeks and that’s going well, although Covid is popping up in a few other schools.

The risks are real, especially given the risk-taking and nonconformist propensity of many older teens, in addition to a vocal and less book-educated populace that helped Trump win in 2016 and don’t like being told what to do by a Democratic governor.

It’s a comfort that the news tells me that currently in the upswing n cases, schools are very rarely the site of transmission, and often when a case pops up it doesn’t spread. Plus I’ve always been careful, and am not shy about shepherding students to the sink or sanitizer pump after picking their nose or sneezing on their hands.

Still, worry rises up in me sometimes. It’s the stories of otherwise healthy people’s immune systems turning against them, the cognitive effects and other complications that keep surprising scientists.

So I got my first flu shot, on the evidence of its being significantly preventative of both COVID-19 infection and complications.

Our admin and our union has our tack, and are watching the numbers. Meanwhile, it will be good to see their faces.